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The Ongoing Problem With Karl Rove

Posted on February 26, 2013 By King Shamus

Why do I bring him up now?

Because Hugh Hewitt said this the other day on Twitter:

Still waiting for critics of Rove to nominate best GOP strategist…for most it is like hating your starting QB but having no back-up.

Hewitt's statement got my dander up a bit and then I sorta went on a rant.

Oops.

Allow me me sorta clean up my tweets for human consumption.

First, I have no other GOP strategerist to replace Karl Rove, so I'll concede Hewitt a well-earned point. If I absolutely had to pick someone to run the 2016 Republican ticket, I'd hire the person who ran either Scott Walker's or Bobby Jindal's campaigns and then hope for the best. At least those folks have had success in the last four years.

Like every other facet of the GOP panoply, it's very tough to have confidence in politicos based in Washington DC. Choosing somebody outside the Beltway might be the only viable option.

But here's something I've been wondering. How come nobody–not the slick consultants, the overpriced underperforming tech gurus, or the high-powered campaign honchos–could figure out just how stupid and self-defeating Mitt Romney's pro-life positioning was?

Think about the journey Romney took to become an anti-abortion presidential candidate. Homeboy was pro-abortion for most of his public life. He only started making vaguely pro-life noises in 2005. He then tried to assure the GOP faithful that he was pro-life.

There were several problems with Mitt's messaging. Most pro-lifers were very skeptical of Romney's rather recent and not completely convincing conversion. That alone probably depressed social conservative turnout and hurt Romney's chances on Election Day.

However, Mitt being perceived as an insincere opportunist wasn't his biggest problem. Romney never used his pro-life position for anything except winning the GOP nomination. Once he got that, being anti-abortion was more or less forgotten by the campaign and the candidate.

Funny thing is, Obamaton propaganda ministers David Plouffe and Jim Messina didn't forget. While Romney was trying and failing to make the election about the national debt going supernova and the sputtering American economy, Obama succeeded in making 2012 about Mitt being a misogynistic piece of dogshit. Naturally, Team Barry used Romney's pro-life stance as the convenient hook to slam the former Massachusetts governor as a vagina-hating douchecanoe. Romney never defended being anti-abortion except in the weakest most mewling ways. Even worse, the GOP standard bearer never employed his pro-life stance as a club to beat up Obama at all.

For God's sake, Obama voted against the Born Alive Act when he was an Illinois muckety-muck. He gave (and continues to give) lots of federal tax dollar love to Planned Parenthood, the same organization that was cool with giving abortions to what it thought were underage sex slaves. There was plenty of anti-life extremism in Obama's curriculum vitae that could've been exploited by the Romney camp. But they just couldn't bring themselves to do it.

So why did Mitt Romney even bother going through the motions to become a pro-lifer in the first place? His position on the abortion issue didn't energize evangelical Christians and other components of the social conservative movement. It didn't expand the party's base by getting significant chunks of the Latino vote, a constituency I keep hearing is full of natural Republican voters. Further, Mitt never employed his pro-life stance as a pivot to attack Barack Obama's shockingly radical anti-life actions. Once the primaries were over, being pro-life didn't help Romney in any way. It can be credibly argued that being a squishy half-assed pro-lifer hurt Romney because it gave Obama an opening to create the War On Women narrative against the GOP standard-bearer.

This should be an iron-clad rule in politics: If your ideological positions are not helping you, they will be used by your opponent to hurt you. This is especially true when it comes to abortion, which is far more emotional and polarizing then an issue like energy independence or entitlement reform. Mitt and his team forgot this law of partisan warfare and it cost them dearly.

I'll admit that this post is a lot of gussied-up Monday morning quarterbacking. On the other hand, the Republican Party consultant class gets paid to figure this out before the election and they still don't know how to play the game. If you listen to Karl Rove and his ilk, they still think the GOP's problems are caused by being too right-wing. They've had just as much time as I've had to do a post-game analysis of the November debacle. Their strongest recommendations involve letting Obama get his way on everything, then lather-rinse-repeat until 2016.

To be fair, Karl Rove won two presidential elections in the last decade, so its not like he's got no game. The problem is that he doesn't understand why Mitt Romney got his ass beat two and a half months ago. Nor does anybody else who runs anything in the Republican Party seem to get it either. If Turd Blossom is the best the GOP can do, then they deserve to perish because they suck at politics.

RELATED: I don't wanna belabor the point, but I'm going to anyway.

Politics–like life itself–is often not about what you say, but how you say it. If Barack Obama stated, "I'm going to raise your taxes because I think you're too stupid to know what to do with all your money", he'd win 10 states, tops. If the President declared, "I'm going to obliterate the Second Amendment and incrementally take away your guns because I don't trust you, the great unwashed bitter clingers", his approval rating would hover just above herpes. If Two-Pack Attack Barry admitted that ObamaCare was going to feature death panels to determine who gets what kinds of medical treatment, Romney would've won the 2012 election with seventy percent of the popular vote.

But of course, Obama doesn't do that. The Duffer-in-Chief believes all those things in his heart, but he never says them out loud. Instead, he always couches his ideology in nicey-nice pablum: "balanced approach", "common sense gun laws", "Obama does care". Even better? As he describes his own campus Marxism as true-blue Americana, he's turns the Republicans into the Ku Klux Klan, the Taliban and the Nazis all rolled into one big slimy ball of extremism.

It doesn't help matters when prominent candidates on the Republican side completely lose the plot and play into his hands. The problem with the GOP isn't that Todd Akin misspoke on the life issue. It's that Todd Akin was never taught how to speak credibly and effectively about his political views in the first place.

To stick with the abortion issue, being pro-life isn't enough for a political candidate. Being extremely pro-life isn't enough. Being pro-life and then turning your position into a cudgel to beat up your opponent is what has to happen if you want to win. Allowing yourself to get bogged down in some weird rhetorical side street will only get you in trouble. If you're not on offense, you're on defense. That means you're getting your ass kicked.

This is true of every political issue. Why take a stand on any topic if it cannot be weaponized and deployed against an opponent?

Obama Failed; Blame Stuff

Posted on December 19, 2011 By Anthony Bialy

1 Comment

It’s all our fault. Barack Obama brought more positively-themed moxie to his new position than our weak and imperfect selves were able to handle, which explains why we mope about being broke and unemployed instead of thanking our executive for every squirrel and grass casserole we don’t have to eat. He saved even the ingrates from a future where brutal corporations were trying to attract customers and not subsidies.

At the same time, some persistent dissenters note that the man who fed us breaded bacon at every meal is complaining that we’re tubby. You may have noticed our president’s tendency to bitch about what he was handed every time he opens his yapper. But he was the one who thought begging was a shrewd plan in the first place.

Most obviously, it’s tedious to hear the president whine about wayward rich folks ruining our economy when everyone aside from Occupy-sympathizing entitlement goons knows that the federal encouragement of subprime mortgages created our foreclosure-level economy. Meddling with the housing market is the precise sort of bloated, wasteful, arbitrary, unconstitutional, and frighteningly counterproductive governmental philosophy that resides at Obama’s core, not to mention his crust and mantle, too.

Why not blame the last staffer for slacking? Obama is fond of saying that we fell into a nation-sized financial sinkhole because of how we paid to to conduct war against well-armed villains who don’t like us, not to mention how we let people keep more of their earnings at home. Meanwhile, the incumbent whines about George W. Bush’s economic policies as if he felt upset that he wasn’t the one who got to sign TARP.

So, let’s say that defending the country while encouraging monetary liberty was not our government’s sole function and in fact caused today’s suffering. It’s still his responsibility to overcome the tough lineup of issues that faced him on day one even if they began hundreds of days prior. Ronald Reagan cleaned up the genuine mess he faced while smiling the whole time, just like Obama’s successor will have to don a hazmat suit and spend months mopping up numerous toxic puddles.

But circumstances only matter for Obama and not for, say Bill Clinton, who totally earned his post-Cold War/internet boom economy. Fortunately for the Secretary of State’s husband, Newt Gingrich decided to actually act like a conservative and send welfare reform to a president who was willing to ink anything that would mean votes. Give Clinton credit for signing it, although he merely happened to be the lucky schmuck whose desk saw a bill that was successful because of how it countered his ideology.

But rotten happenings have ruined the current president’s possible sterling record, even those things that helped the last Democrat. That’s why Obama amusingly blames the same internet that saved Bubba’s ample rump for today’s job losses. A liberal president can’t be blamed the external forces with which he must grapple, except when same developments helpfully postpone an inevitable slowdown.

The president’s shrewd tactic of accusing progress for economic sclerosis may nonetheless fail to convince voters. The present woeful climate of change is reminiscent of the grim period in American history when cars put horse carriage drivers out of work, or those painful decades when catalog sales forced all those businesses to shutter. Technology that enables the betterment of the human condition destroys Obama’s vision of an America where everyone can afford to put government-subsidized solar panels on their thatched roofs.

Of course, daring to let people keep more of their money can cause financial chaos five or seven years later. I bet you didn’t even think that the tax rates enacted in 2001 and 2003 caused a recession a few Olympics later. All Obama does is accuse, which is a technique he deploys when he realizes people aren’t lauding him enough.

But who can blame him considering how the rabble doesn’t respect him? You are the biggest problem of all to your leader, you know. I bet you didn’t even notice that he saved us from a depression. If you’re suffering financially, well, have you even tried redistributing copper wire to yourself from wealthy hoarders?

You stubbornly refuse to obtain a job in favor if walking around all gloomy without even bothering to tie shut your bathrobe. Maybe you fear that you’d just get murdered in an incident of “workplace violence” if you did luck out and uncover employment. But you’ll be relieved to learn that it’s slightly more statistically unlikely that you’ll get killed by a non-terrorist than you will successfully start a career.

Your misery displeases your president, who can only offer so much encouragement to us unenlightened dupes. The public keeps resisting the idea that the president’s foes want everyone to fend for themselves in a lawless wasteland where the destitute are hunted for sport and profit. He can’t unite us if you won’t let him label people with views that diverge from his as demonic.

Obama’s fellow Americans have created his worst circumstance of all. Voters who didn’t want the blame shouldn’t have elected someone who needed exactly perfect conditions to thrive.

If it makes you feel better, he would have mucked up a thriving economy, too. Of course, he would have blamed Reagan’s capital gains tax cut for it. Conservatives possess an uncanny ability to harm future Democratic presidents when they feel like it. Manufacturing very precise economic time bombs is one of Karl Rove’s specialties.

Anthony Bialy is a writer and “Red Eye” conservative in New York City. He tweets at http://twitter.com/AnthonyBialy.

Quote of the Day — POTUS Warm Up Act Edition

Posted on September 8, 2011 By Bruce McQuain

Say what you will about Karl Rove, but he knows politics. He has an article in the WSJ today in which he talks about the president’s mistaken belief that he had the power to schedule an address before a joint session of Congress and how he was reminded what “co-equal branches of government” meant.

He then discusses why Obama had to move the speech and how it now ends up in non-primetime before the opening NFL game of the season. Which brings us to our quote of the day:

The great danger facing Mr. Obama tonight is that the public simply tunes him out, viewing his pronouncements as either irrelevant or annoying.

It’s been a dramatic fall for a man who was, his supporters assured us in 2008, America’s best orator since Abraham Lincoln. Now he’s reduced to a warm-up act for a football game.

Amazing how that works, no? Talk, talk, talk and no action and pretty soon, well, people begin ignoring you. Imagine that.

Oh, and on the leadership issue? Rove discusses some recent polling, compares it with some previous polling and then tells a simple truth:

There was one other telling number, buried in this week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll: When he was inaugurated, 70% felt that Mr. Obama had “strong leadership qualities.” Today, only 42% feel that way. And when voters stop seeing a president as a strong leader, they generally stop seeing him as president.

Call it our second quote of the day.

Karl Rove: “Obama Owns the Debt-Ceiling Fiasco”

Posted on July 14, 2011 By Joy McCann

13 Comments

The Architect wonders why the President thinks it’s the Republicans’ job to get him out of this mess:

President Barack Obama and Congress face a mess if the federal government hits the debt ceiling Aug. 2. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, projects that the government will receive $172 billion in revenues between Aug. 3 and Aug. 31, but it is on the hook to spend $306 billion, leaving a shortfall of $134 billion.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama told Scott Pelley of CBS News that “there may simply not be the money in the coffers” to issue Social Security, veterans and disability checks after Aug. 3.

Not so. The $172 billion in revenues collected over the rest of the month can pay the $29 billion interest charges on the national debt, Social Security benefits ($49 billion), Medicaid and Medicare ($50 billion), active duty military pay ($2.9 billion), Department of Defense vendors ($31.7 billion), IRS refunds ($3.9 billion), and about a quarter of the $12.8 billion in unemployment checks due that month.

There will, however, be no cash for highway construction, no checks for federal workers or retirees, no agriculture payments, no open national parks. Interest rates are also likely to rise if U.S. debt is downgraded, adding massively to the deficit and further damaging the economy. This would be a disaster with no political winners.

The president wants a $2.4 trillion debt-ceiling increase to get him past next year’s election—and the deal he’s proposing is based on promised future cuts paired with substantial tax increases on households earning more than $250,000 a year.

House Speaker John Boehner proposed matching a debt-ceiling hike with substantial spending cuts. The Congressional Budget Office estimates federal spending at $46.1 trillion over the next 10 years, a dramatic escalation from projections before Mr. Obama took office. Mr. Boehner’s modest proposal was to trim that back 5.2% over the decade, but the president balked.

Yet the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that Mr. Obama talks about is shy on details. No one who’s attended his frequent negotiating sessions knows what his proposal really is.

The president has made a bipartisan agreement even more difficult by declaring certain spending off-limits to cuts. Mr. Obama’s “untouchable” list includes his $1 trillion health-care reform, $128 billion in unspent stimulus funds, education and training outlays, his $53 billion high-speed rail proposal, spending on “green” jobs and student loans, and virtually any structural changes to entitlements except further squeezing payments to doctors, hospitals and health-care professionals.

Mr. Obama has offered no evidence since becoming president that he wants to restrain the upward trajectory of government spending. He does want higher taxes to pay for significantly higher federal spending. But he wants Republicans to deliver the tax increases, since Democrats couldn’t pass them last year despite controlling both chambers of Congress.

Republicans have wisely declined.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, we can’t get enough of this:

Obama warns Cantor: ‘Don’t call my bluff’ in debt-limit talks
By Russell Berman and Sam Youngman – 07/13/11 07:43 PM ET

Republicans said tense negotiations over raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit at the White House ended when President Obama stormed out of the meeting with a stern warning to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.): “Don’t call my bluff.”

“It ended with the president abruptly walking out of the meeting,” Cantor told reporters upon returning to the Capitol Wednesday.

Via Insty, Rand Simberg remarks, “I’d love to play poker with him. Does he know that it’s played with cards?”

Nope; card games are for bitter gun-clingers.