
Even George W. Bush's top strategist Karl Rove thinks House Republicans overreached in reneging on the payroll tax cut deal. His advice: having lost the politics, Republicans should wait until (or to see if?) President Obama flies off to Hawaii on vacation, bash him and congressional Democrats for abdicating their duties, and then ... pass the same Senate payroll tax cut compromise they could have passed on Tuesday.
"I think the Wall Street journal editorial today hit it on the nail," Rove said Wednesday on Fox News.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Add Karl Rove's name to the list of pundits and pols weighing in how to compare Occupy Wall Street to the tea party.
The short version: he's not seeing the connection.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove's American Crossroads group is planning to "make a star out of" the $1.1 million armored bus President Barack Obama is using to travel across the country by featuring it in attack ads ahead of the 2012 election.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Rick Perry is facing a full-on assault from former Bush aides over his comments on Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, pushing a long-rumored rivalry between the two ex-governors' camps out into the open.
Acknowledging to TPM that "there is no love lost between the W camp and the Perry camp," one Bush veteran appealed for detente.
"I do not think it serves any purpose for any Bushy to fuel to fire or resentment," the person said. "The goal for us should be to defeat Obama not defeat ourselves.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)It's not often you see President Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, agreeing wholeheartedly with Karl Rove. However, they're both singing from the same song-sheet when it comes to Rick Perry's recent remarks on Ben Bernanke.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)It's no secret that Team George W. Bush and Team Rick Perry are not exactly close. And with Perry flailing after he accused Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke of "almost treasonous" behavior, one of Team W's biggest names is taking the opportunity to twist the knife.
"You don't accuse the chairman of the federal reserve of being a traitor to his country. Of being guilty of treason," Karl Rove told Fox News Tuesday. "And, suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in texas. You know, that is not, again a presidential statement."
The Conservative anonymous-money giant Crossroads GPS is spending $1.4 million on ads targeting Democrats on spending, part of a $20 million summer ad blitz.
The TV spots are running in 10 districts and vary slightly from lawmaker to lawmaker, although they mostly focus on the 2009 stimulus bill and past debt limit votes. Notably, the ads do not stake out a specific position on the current debt limit fight, which is proving increasingly divisive for the party as Republicans in the House and Senate struggle to find a unified voice.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Progressive Super-PAC Priorities USA is hitting the airwaves in five states in an effort counter ad buys from Karl Rove's anonymous-money organization, Crossroads GPS.
The ads specifically target Rove for playing "politics at its worst" and highlight the House GOP's plan to turn Medicare into a private voucher system with stingier benefits. They'll run in Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Colorado, all highly competitive states in 2012 that President Obama won in his first election.
Karl Rove said in an interview on Fox News Thursday night that Sarah Palin doesn't think the rules of presidential campaigns apply to her.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, an affiliate organization to the Karl Rove backed American Crossroads PAC, is out with a new web video insinuating that the Obama administration is rewarding unions who pushed for the health care law with expeditions from that same law.
The video frames the issue somewhat like an action movie trailer, utilizing ominous music and rapid scene cuts to introduce the "union bosses" who "shoved healthcare down our throats." And it features quick shots of semi-socialist symbols, such as a Canadian flag and a red clenched fist spliced between shots of chanting union members.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove, among the big name conservatives who are openly hostile to Donald Trump's birther-centric sort of-presidential campaign, apparently tried to give Trump a rhetorical way out of his talk about President Obama's birth certificate.
On Fox News on Monday, Rove described how Trump apparently took the advice to heart -- and then immediately ignored it.
It's the latest round of the war of words between Trump and Rove, which kicked off when Rove told Fox that Trump was "joke candidate."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The big spending group founded by Karl Rove has succeeded in uniting unions and fiscal hawks -- in criticism of the group's new TV ad.
On Wednesday, Crossroads GPS launched a nationwide TV ad attacking the relationship between unions and Democratic politicians.
By the end of the day they had succeeded in putting the National Education Association and the anti-public sector union libertarian think-tank Cato on the same page: the ad, both said, is at best a stretch and at worse untrue. Crossroads disputes the claims and stands by its commercial.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The conservative campaign spending group linked to Karl Rove is going up with a tough ad aimed at America's labor unions and the president they supported in 2008.
The short version: Unions and their political activity are "a threat to democracy."
Crossroads GPS, the non-profit political spending outfit who Rove and former RNC chair Ed Gillespie helped launch last year, is going on national cable news channels Wednesday with the 60-second spot, aimed squarely at the union leaders and Democratic politicians who have been taking on governors across the Midwest in the past few weeks.
Crossroads GPS is not required to release the names of its donors, and has been a common target of Democratic and progressive criticism since its founding.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Now that former Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) is throwing her hat into the ring for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), expect a nasty, bitter race and plenty of ghosts turning up from Wilson's decade-long Washington career.
Wilson, a former Air Force officer and director at the National Security Council, was a rising GOP star and a standout on defense and intelligence matters post-9/11. But her Washington career ended in 2008 when she lost a GOP Senate primary to Rep. Steve Pearce, who then lost the general election to Democrat Tom Udall.
In the lead up to that primary, Wilson suffered a series of public relations blows for her role in the U.S. attorneys' scandal, improperly politicized firings of U.S. prosecutors by the Bush administration, which Democrats spent months investigating in 2007 and 2008. A lot of information about Wilson's role wasn't ever really scrutinized to the extent it could have been because she lost her first Senate bid.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)In Karl Rove's mind, the White House is really the one to blame for the continued birther hysteria.
On The O'Reilly Factor last night, the former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush chastised the Obama Administration for not putting to rest the continued skepticism on the right about President Obama's true place of birth.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Look who's suddenly all for passing things in the Senate with 51 votes.
In a new column entitled "Democrats can't filibuster ObamaCare repeal," Karl Rove argues that Republicans can use the budget reconciliation process to repeal the health care law with 51 votes. That's the filibuster-proof process that allowed Democrats to tweak revenue and spending measures in the greater health care law, which Republicans at the time compared to Chicago-mob style politics.
On March 1, 2010 Rove himself called that "changing rules midstream."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Recently ousted Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele -- who oversaw the organization's expenditures at bondage-themed restaurants, its plunge into $22 million in debt and a bare bones fundraising effort -- claimed Wednesday his RNC was "a very lean machine."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove is pushing back on tea party accusations that he embodies the worst of the GOP establishment. Again.
Rove has found himself on the wrong side of the tea party quite a few times this election season. Yesterday, on CBS' Face The Nation, he stood up to critics on the ultra-right who say he's part of the failed Republican establishment they're hoping to purge with nominees like Sharron Angle, Ken Buck and Christine O'Donnell.
Rove's stand lasted less than one minute, before he hastily apologized to the tea party and He Who Must Be Obeyed among the GOP, Rush Limbaugh.
The most recent flap began last week, when Rove told Der Spiegel that the movement driving the GOP these days lacked the "well-organized, coherent" and "ideologically motivated" backbone of the Reagan Revolution.
"If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated," Rove told the German paper, according to the Huffington Post. "It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek. Rather, these are people who are deeply concerned about what they see happening to their country, particularly when it comes to spending, deficits, debt and health care."
So there you have it. Rove, the Architect, thinks the modern driving force in the GOP -- you know, the one that stars a woman who had to assure voters that "I'm not a witch" in her campaign commercials -- lacks the, er, polish of the party during the Reagan era. (As HuffPo noted, the Der Spiegel interview wasn't the first time Rove's said it.)
Bring on Rush's outrage, Rove's desperate attempts to redeem himself with his conservative Republican friends, and Rove's eventual apology to all involved. It's a movie we've seen before, but yesterday was a far more truncated version.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Steele: 'No One's Produced One Shred Of Evidence' Of Foreign Money
Appearing on Meet The Press, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele responded strongly to the accusation that foreign money was being funneled into pro-Republican political organizations: "I don't know what they're talking about. No one's produced one shred of evidence that any of that is happening. And, you know, I--look, you know, when President, then candidate, Obama was asked to disclose some of his donors because there was suspicion of their being, you know, the foreign source of money into his campaign, they refused to do it. So don't give me this high and mighty, you know, holier than thou attitude about, about special interests flooding, flooding the political marketplace. The Democrats have been dabbling in those areas and clearly disclose it. If you, if you think that there's something out there, disclose it, Nancy. Disclose it, you know, anyone else who's got that evidence."
Rove: Liberal Attacks On My Funding 'Hypocritical'
Appearing on Face The Nation, Karl Rove defended the fundraising and spending of his group American Crossroads, which the White House has attacked for not disclosing its funding sources. In response, Rove said that Prescient Obama benefitted from over $400 million in outside support during the 2008 campaign: "And if liberals do it and nobody complains about it, it strikes me as somewhat hypocritical when conservatives adopt their strategies and follow their models and conservatives get criticized by the President of the United States by name."
Axelrod: Corporate Spending On Election 'A Threat To Our Democracy'
Appearing on Face The Nation, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod continued to blast corporate spending in the current election season, including the charge made by Democrats that spending has included money from foreign sources. "This issue of this special interest spending is very important," said Axelrod. "It's never happened before that organizations are spending this kind of money. And the American people need to ask, 'Why is the oil industry, Wall Street and others spending this kind of money to defeat candidates and elect others in this sort of secretive way?' You know, that is a threat to our democracy."
Rove: Obama Has 'Enemies List Unrestrained By Any Facts Or Evidence'
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Karl Rove hit back at accusations from the White House and Democrats his group American Crossroads, and other conservative groups, are receiving foreign money. "They have not one shred of evidence to back up that baseless lie. This is a desperate and I think disturbing trend by the president of the United States to tar his political adversaries with some kind of, you know, enemies list unrestrained by any facts or evidence whatsoever."
The Democratic National Committee will go up on television with a new ad targeting Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie for their political activity during the midterm elections through groups which don't need to disclose their donors.
TPM obtained a copy of the ad, which hits the GOP on a point the Democrats have been hammering of late -- corporations getting involved in elections thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove just can't get enough of Christine O'Donnell these days. Since first describing her as "nutty" on the night she won the Republican nomination for Senate in Delaware, Rove has of course found religion (no pun intended) when it comes to O'Donnell and turned into one of her greatest cheerleaders on Fox.
Case in point? Last night on Hannity, Rove was over the moon about how O'Donnell's handled herself since primary night on Sept. 14. The show's host, the perpetually starry-eyed-over-right-wingers Sean Hannity asked Rove to weigh in on O'Donnell's campaign strategy, which consists mostly of never talking to much of the press again. Despite his reservations about O'Donnell's refusal to answer tough questions in the past, Rove gave the plan a big Architect thumbs up.
"She handled the witchcraft issue great -- she made it a joke," Rove said. Still, amidst all the praise he noted O'Donnell's dreadful poll numbers and suggested there could be one flaw in O'Donnell's plan.
"She's right -- she's right on the issues, [Democratic nominee Chris] Coons is wrong on the issues," he said. "The question is, will voters in Delaware pay attention to her? "
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-backed group that is spending heavily on ads for this year's Senate races, has been rolling out a whole bunch of ads in some top races.
An ad against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) reprises a theme from an earlier Crossroads ad, hammering Reid for his past remarks on the Senate floor about how "only" 36,000 jobs had been lost in a previous month, which was "really good."
Then the announcer uses a clever turn of phrase: "Harry Reid. Extremely out of touch with Nevada." Look at that as a clear effort to counter Reid's ads, which have derided Republican nominee Sharron Angle as being "extreme."
The TPM Poll Average puts Reid ahead by 47.2%-44.0%.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)A new ad by Karl Rove-backed outside group American Crossroads attacks New Hampshire Senate nominee Rep. Paul Hodes (D) for calling himself a "fiscal conservative" in a recent ad.
"Hodes voted for the pork-filled stimulus bill," the American Crossroads ad says. "$1.9 million to study ants in Africa. $39 million for office upgrades for politicians. Billions wasted and unemployment still higher."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, outside groups backed by GOP heavy-hitters Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, raised $14.5 million in the 30-day period ending Sunday, bringing their fundraising total this year to $32 million, according to the Associated Press.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Bill Clinton: 'I Was Wrong' That Health Care Law Would Become Popular Quickly
Appearing on Meet The Press, former President Bill Clinton said he was wrong to have predicted that the health care reform law would be immediately popular after being signed into law: "Well, I was wrong about that for two reasons. First of all, the benefits of the bill are spread out over three or four years. It takes a long time to implement it. And secondly, there was--there's been an enormous and highly effective attack on it. But I think it's important. Let's--forget about the politics. Let's talk about the facts here. The real reason that the interest groups want to repeal, not fix health care, is that they like the way it's going now. They're dumping people every year and making the government pick them up. We are spending 17.2 percent of our income on health care. None of our wealthy competitors spend more than 10 1/2. Yet our infant mortality rate is higher than theirs, our overall mortal--age expectancy is lower than theirs. We don't have a better health system than they do. What's happened? That's a trillion dollars we spot our competitors every year for a health system that doesn't work as well. The people that are getting a trillion dollars have a lot of money to spread all this information--misinformation."
Kaine: Dems 'Proud Of The Accomplishment' Of Health Care Legislation
Appearing on State of the Union, DNC Chairman Tim Kaine said that the new health care law would be politically beneficial to the party. "I travel all over the country. I guess I've been in about 42 states, and most Democrats that I see on the trail are very proud of the accomplishment and they're talking about it," said Kaine. In response to Democrats who have touted their votes against the bill, Kaine said: "Some, particularly House members in districts that, you know, can often get gerrymandered and become tough districts are distancing themselves from the health care bill. I don't tell people how to run their races, but I've been on a ballot seven times and won seven races, and in my experience, you ought to be proud of what you're doing and promote the accomplishments."
Here are the line-ups for the Sunday talk shows this weekend:
• ABC, This Week: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
• CBS, Face The Nation: Former President Bill Clinton, Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (R-DE).
• CNN, State Of The Union: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).
• Fox News Sunday: Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (R-DE), former Bush White House Adviser Karl Rove.
• NBC, Meet The Press: Former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)When Karl Rove called Christine O'Donnell "nutty" on Tuesday night and said she didn't have a chance to win the Senate race in Delaware, maybe he thought he was just talking straight to Fox News viewers. But since then, conservatives have been tearing Rove to shreds over his comments. Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin to Michelle Malkin have effectively changed Rove "from keeper of the conservative cause to the next Jane Hamsher," as TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro put it.
Which might be why Rove backpedaled so hard on Fox News today. See if you can spot the ever-so-slight change in tone:
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Well, that didn't take long. After being pounded for a full day by some of the conservative movement's biggest names, a bruised and battered Karl Rove took to the Fox News airwaves this morning to get on board the Christine O'Donnell train.
Rove, you'll recall, refused to buy the tea party hype about Delaware's new Republican Senate nominee, telling Sean Hannity on the night O'Donnell won that the "nutty" things O'Donnell says meant that the GOP had no shot at winning a Senate majority with her representing the party in Delaware (a race the GOP was expected to win with establishment choice Mike Castle as the nominee.)
Since he made that comment, commentators from Michelle Malkin to Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh have called Rove everything from incompetent to traitorous. The end result? Rove has come to embody the "establishment" in discussions about O'Donnell. And as anyone knows, this year, the "establishment" label on a Republican resume is about as popular as a meat dress at a PETA meeting.
So perhaps it's no surprise that Rove buckled under the pressure of his right-wing critics, rushing onto Fox this morning to change the narrative. How can you call me establishment? he asked. I supported Sharron Angle for goodness' sake! And as to that whole "the GOP Senate majority is doomed" thing, Rove is now claiming that not only does he think O'Donnell can win, he actually orchestrated sending NRSC money to her campaign.
As Rove might have said in a moment of honesty, it's all kind of nutty.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Add Rush Limbaugh to the list of prominent conservatives tearing into Karl Rove's hide today. As Rove continued his tour slamming freshly minted Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell over the considerable number of skeletons in her closet, Rush was almost literally beside himself with frustration at the idea that anyone -- much less The Architect -- would dare violate the 11th Commandment so brazenly.
O'Donnell's nomination has created deep divisions between the Republican Party and right-wing activists. Last night, Rove bashed O'Donnell -- and her chances of being elected -- and insisted that she's said a lot of "nutty things." He was attacked by some right-wingers for those comments. O'Donnell whacked him back in a televised interview this morning. And then Rove responded to O'Donnell and his right-wing critics, daring them to 'prove me wrong'. Then Palin slammed Rove. Now it's Limbaugh's turn.
"If 51 seats was really the objective -- if getting the majority is really that important, then let's go balls to the wall for Christine O'Donnell!" Limbaugh screamed on his radio show today after playing a clip of Rove's already infamous anti-O'Donnell interview on Hannity last night.
"Why not fight for it?" Limbaugh asked. "Why not fight for it? Castle's OK as the 51st vote but this woman isn't?"
Rush seemed in danger of having an aneurysm at the idea that Rove would do something as heretical as point out that O'Donnell has more than a few very serious character flaws and -- as the polls show -- is a serious underdog against her Democratic opponent in November, in a race that Republicans had once thought was theirs for the taking.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Sarah Palin joined the chorus of right-wingers slamming Karl Rove over his comments that the Republican nominee for senate in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell, has said some "nutty things" and doesn't have a chance to win in the general election.
O'Donnell has a lot of baggage from her history as a conservative activist, and trails Democrat Chris Coons in a Senate race that Republicans thought was theirs for the taking. O'Donnell's nomination has created deep divisions between the Republican Party and right-wing activists.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove is not backing down from his criticisms of Christine O'Donnell, despite a growing chorus of criticisms coming from right-wing corners. In an interview on Fox today, Rove was asked to respond to attacks from the newly-minted Republican nominee for Senate in Delaware, who, like her supporters, has been openly calling Rove out for not getting on board with her campaign.
Rove's answer to O'Donnell and the other right-wing critics, in a nuthshell: You guys really think Christine O'Donnell can win a general election with this much embarrassing baggage? Prove it.
"I believe the questions [about] why she had a problem for five years with paying her federal income taxes, why her house was foreclosed on and put up for sale, why it took 16 years to settle her college debt and get her diploma while she went around for years claiming she was a college graduate," Rove said. "I think a lot of voters in Delaware are going to want more than she is offering to them right now, and we'll see."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)With the battle won by the ultra-right in Delaware, the national conservative pundits who backed Christine O'Donnell in last night's GOP Senate primary have turned on a man who is presumably one of their own: Karl "The Architect" Rove. After Rove bemoaned O'Donnell's nomination as the end of the GOP's chances to take back the Senate in a heated interview with Sean Hannity last night, pundits and tea partiers have slammed him as a traitor and even called for Fox News to suspend him as an on-air analyst.
In one five-minute interview, it seems, Rove went from keeper of the conservative cause to the next Jane Hamsher in the eyes of those who are ostensibly his allies. It's a stunning turn against the man who has recast himself as a right-wing media darling since Bush left office, and suggests that the next war on the establishment from angry conservatives could be aimed in part at the man who for close to a decade was the progressive movement's enemy number one.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove and Sean Hannity duked it out tonight over Christine O'Donnell's win in the Republican Senate primary in Delaware, with Rove, surprisingly, calling some of O'Donnell's remarks "nutty" and conceding that "this is not a race we're going to be able to win."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)File under "Where this is headed."
Democrats are pretty clearly going to lose some seats in November. And, if this Fox News clip last night is any indication, Republicans will use that defeat to press Obama to abandon what remains of the stimulus bill itself and other job-creating strategies.
Here's what Karl Rove told Greta van Susteren last night: "there needs to be an event that causes -- that gives them, gives them the excuse, gives them the opportunity, whatever verb or noun you want to attach to it, to shift gears. And that moment's coming. It's in 60-some-odd days. It's called the November election."
Former top George W. Bush operatives are really distancing themselves from the Bush administration's relationship with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Karl Rove said last night on Fox News that he wasn't aware until "recently" that Rauf was sent abroad by Bush's State Department to talk about the Islamic faith.
Laura Ingraham, filling in for Bill O'Reilly, asked about Rauf "working" for the Bush administration.
"I'm not sure working is the right title," Rove said, trying to frame Rauf's role as part of "bureaucratic" State Department decisions that are determined "apolitically." Rove's evidence included the fact as a young Republican he was named to a youth delegation during Jimmy Carter's administration.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)American Crossroads, the conservative group backed by Karl Rove and former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, has an ad in the Nevada Senate race attacking Harry Reid. And this one features caricatures of all the people in other states that Reid has helped.
"Obamacare is bad for health care in America -- and worse for Nevada," says the announcer. "Because when Sen. Harry Reid needed votes to push Obamacare, he cut sweet deals across the country -- to help Nebraska, to help Louisiana, to even help Florida. What has Nevada gotten from Sen. Reid? Record foreclosures, and the highest unemployment rate in the nation. And Reid's still pushing for even more government control of your health care. Really, Harry? How about some help for Nevada?"
Okay, I get the Nebraska farmer, and the senior citizen in Florida taking his grandson on a fishing trip. But the guy with the red vest, black bow-tie and horse carriage for Louisiana? Did they run out of modern stereotypes and have to go back to the 1890s?
The TPM Poll Average for this race gives Reid lead of 46.4%-43.8% over Republican nominee Sharron Angle.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Karl Rove thinks Republicans should just take a breath when it comes to all this talk about amending the Constitution to keep illegal immigrants from taking advantage of the 14th Amendment.
"I mean, is the problem of anchor babies the central problem we face in securing our border? I don't think so," Rove told Fox Radio's John Gibson yesterday. "Let's stay focused on the things that we've got a chance to force Democrats in September and October to vote for that would actually have a positive impact on the border."
Rove blames the chatter about changing the 14th Amendment on a few -- well, actually one -- Republican stuck in a bad position because he was seen by some in his party as an ally of the Obama administration.
"It's not 'they,' it's him," Rove said when Gibson asked why Republicans threatened to derail their focus on economic talk with the 14th Amendment. "I mean, Lindsay Graham brings this up, I think to give himself some credentials [with the conservative base]...And then it gets jumped on by some others."
That's not to say Rove doesn't approve of the idea of ending the practice of so-called "anchor babies" -- he just thinks we don't need to amend the Constitution to end the practice.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)When Rush is away, Rove will play.
Renaissance man Karl Rove -- a master campaigner, a shrewd senior adviser to former president George W. Bush, and a pretty bad emcee -- will apparently be filling in for conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh next Monday. Earlier this morning, Rove tweeted, "Rush Limbaugh will be out Monday, 8/9/10. Tune in as I make my EIB Network guest-host debut!"
We certainly will!
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Turns out that American Crossroads, the group backed by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, among others, to raise money for Republican candidates, is pulling in the dough after all: The group says it raised $8.5 million in June, according to Politico.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)
