Posted on 11/04/2010 4:30:30 AM PDT by Dr. Scarpetta
There is a singular event that shoved the Republican Senate car over the cliff.
That event was the primary victory of Christine O'Donnell. This morning she used a phrase that is right on the money. That description is "Republican Cannibalism."
I personally hold Karl Rove to blame, followed closely by Senator John Cornyn. Rove is an establishment Progressive Republican of the first order.
Following O'Donnell's message of values victory in Delaware, Rove started slinging mud in her direction because he realized she was a woman that couldn't be bought & sold on a D.C. street corner.
It was Rove who almost exclusively undermined an untested Republican. When challenged, he became entrenched, making it a media story.
Coming out of a surprise primary victory, everyone would obviously be questioning O’Donnell’s candidacy.
It's the "Man Bites Dog" story. Rove turned an opportunity to help create an up-and-coming political star into much less.
The bottom feeder Rove chose for his personal aggrandizement to put blood in the water. The sharks had a feeding frenzy.
The result was that yet another "Traditional Values Candidate" was beaten by her own political party, & the momentum of several other races was slowed.
It gave Reid & others the chance to further paint traditional values candidates as kooks. The Republican cannibalism resulted in the Senate leadership failure to get behind Republican nominees.
The cannibalism by a self-professed REPUBLICAN strategist, wrapped up is his own glory led to lost momentum by MIller, Fiorina (albeit her real defeat was the unfortunate infection), Buck, Angle & Rossi.
His poor choices contributed to a decay of no less than 15 percent-point in Delaware. Had Delaware been advocated by Rove, rather than diminished, today we would be looking at a three-seat Senate majority, & a Republican Governor in CA.
(Excerpt) Read more at stgnews.com ...
>>Rove had nothing to do with the lose of the seat; it was the inexperienced, unqualified, empty suit with a pretty face that was the problem.<<
Which tea party candidate did Rove support?
>>>Which tea party candidate did Rove support?
For that matter, what support has Tokyo Karl given to ANY conservative?
What the heck are you talking about? When did I say any such thing?
Why not learn the facts about the millions Rove got for this election, the dozens of seats that were won in part due to his help, instead of the name-calling about someone who, while I agree he shouldn't have told the truth about her when he did, did more good this election than anyone badmouthing him here?
If people are turncoats for telling the TRUTH (so much for us moral conservatives) about a wretched, idiotic candidate, we're no better than the democrats.
She's now a three-time loser, including one election where she got FOUR PERCENT...but it's Rove's fault she lost by double digits.
Dude...you just outed yourself as a RINO...lol If you guys really believe that a Senate full of Chafees, Stowes, McCains, and the like are good for the US of A then you are all crazy. If that becomes the case, surely this experiment will be over. All it will do is delay it's final demise as if the Dems were in full control.
“..And how many people do you think didn’t vote for her because of what Rove said?..”
Evidently, enough fence-sitters to cause her to lose. Like it or not, his word carries weight with people. Hopefully, a LOT less weight now.
For the record - Jim DeMint agrees with what I said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2621425/posts
RE Witch Stuff: People do dumb things when they’re teenagers. ALL of us do. If we held everybody accountable for stupid crap we did as teens, NO ONE is qualified.
No intelligent person should take her “witch” stuff seriously. If she were some liberal hollywood douchebag slut making a statement like that on a half-assed comedian’s TV show, they’d have been crowing about how avant-garde and enlightened she is for throwing off the “oppressive shackles of Christianity” or some other such bullsh*t.
And besides: I’d rather vote for a person who admits their past mistakes and momentary lapses of good judgement than some Marxist/socialist assclown (Dem OR RINO) who wants to use the coercive power of the State to steal from me what I worked hard for all my life to give some lowlife permanent victim class.
We either fight for our people or we don’t. I won’t vote for RINOs. Ever. Voting for McCain was necessary at the time, but the more I see how things turned out, the more I believe God has it under control - allowing the Dems to get into control, have their mask ripped off and letting them expose themselves for what they really are.
If McCain would have gotten elected, with a Dem congress in control and him doing his “maverick” act, the Republicans would have been blamed for three generations and we WOULD have had a Democrat century.
Tuesday was TaKe Out The Trash Day in America. Instead of winning a million dollars, we won 900,000. That’s a HUGE start. Every little victory for us is a stunning defeat to them. And this was a HUGE bitch slap to the Dems.
It is what it is, and we move on from here - and fight to prevent the “Blue Blood Good Ol’ Boy” network in the GOP don’t Eff it up by “reaching across the aisle” and compromising with the enemy.
You and netmilsmom said:
>>>Which tea party candidate did Rove support?
>>>>>>For that matter, what support has Tokyo Karl given to ANY conservative?
In answer, quite a few. His American Crossroads PAC spent a lot of money just in September on behalf of tea party and conservative candidates:
For Ken Buck (tea party candidate CO) $1,786,519
For Rand Paul (tea party candidate KY) $478,771
For Sharon Angle (tea party candidate NV) $678,485
Rob Portman (OH ACU 89) $820,000
Marco Rubio (tea party, FL) $246,675
Roy Blunt (MO, lifetime ACU 96, received 2 100’s) $721,964
Kelly Ayotte (NH, endorsed by Sarah Palin) $658,329
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_supopp/2009_C00487363
Also Rove’s American Crossroads GPS spent at least $1,300,000 on behalf of Pat Toomey.
http://www.seattlepi.com/politico/428343_politico43527.html
I haven’t read this entire thread, so please forgive me if someone brought this up. But I’m convinced that O’Donnell wouldn’t have been so “flawed,” had she not been viciously attacked upon her primary win by one of her “own.” Rove did untold damage here and he needs to pay for it.
my FRiend, it is your thought process that is as simple as that. Karl Rove cost the Republicans the Senate. I.E., the same Republicans who made this self-professed idiot savant a millionaire, were betrayed.
Instead of fighting alongside the winner of a Republican Primary, Karl Rove gave tacit approval to the MSM to savage O'Donnell. Worse still, he then JOINED them in their attacks. With Rove on her side, the savagery itself would have been an asset.
What if your company hired an ad agency who ran an ad telling the world how terrible your products were? This man is paid to be a servant of the GOP, not its master. I hope the RNC and various candidates' campaigns cut him off. He is a charlatan who has NEVER delivered value for the money. Bigger fools? The GOP/RNC Establishment that supports him.
What if the products really were terrible? I believe a better candidate would have been elected. Do you think Rove has more influence than Palin?
Rove is a private person and what can be done to him is limited, but Senator John Cornyn could be kicked out of office.
“Which tea party candidate did Rove support?”
I’m not sure, and I don’t really care. Nor do I care what he had for breakfast, nor do I care what his favorite football team is. The guy is a freaking talking head. If COD can’t get her message out over the time from when she won the primary to Election Day it is nobodies fault but hers and her staffs.
If this country and its electorate put that much into what one person says, then turn out the lights because the party is over.
Source, please
The Coons product is far, by far, worse than the O'Donnell on her worst day. A Marxist, he reaped the benefit of free MSM "advertising" occasioned by Rove's treachery. If Rove believed his product, Castle, was superior, he had the option of silence after his man lost. That's even if he truly believed Castle had a better shot than O'Donnell. You see, the voters did not agree.
What Rove did was highlight his own ineptitude. Rove selfishly injected himself into the race on the other side ... the side other than the one that pays him.
If a Republican cannot win a primary, then yes, it definitely means they are a WEAK candidate as far as being a Republican. Now, if you prefer to have candidates who are strong with centrists and Democrats, then I agree with you. Murkowski might indeed win against the votes of conservatives. Since this is a conservative web site, I assumed you wanted a conservative to win. Plus, Joe Miller would have almost certainly won the general election had Murkowski NOT entered the race as a write-in candidate. Again, posters here should find that the most appealing outcome, since we are supposedly interested in conservative candidates.
O’Donnell is a different situation than Miller of course, but she should have been enthusiastically supported by the ENTIRE party. She was kneecapped by the moderate/centrists. I’m not going to say Rove cost us the election, but I think it’s safe to say the negative PR from her fellow Republicans certainly hurt her. They would have expected us conservatives to unify behind Mike Castle.
Finally, the fact that incumbents are so strong is exactly what is wrong with politics today. The founders never ended for people to be senators for life. Yet, incumbents in both parties are using the power of their position to serve special interests and hold onto power. To do so, they frequently violate the constitution. Again, that’s something that people who post here are supposed to be concerned about.
Your right, it just bothers me that people can be so hypocritical. Dear lord, if COD had been a Dem, with her credentials, everyone on this site would be ripping her a new one and it would have been completely justified.
And when did we as conservatives start making BS excuses for everything under the sun? Get over it people, you win some, you lose some but don’t become a bunch of whining little liberals in the process.
So maybe it would have been a good idea if he kept his mouth shut, right?
You make some decent points, but here’s the problem. Placing ideology over electability can be as bad as placing electability over ideology. You acknowledge the former but ignore the latter. What I mean is, it’s a balancing act. The infamous Buckley Rule didn’t say to nominate the most electable candidate. It said to nominate the most electable CONSERVATIVE candidate.
My point? Mike Castle was simply NOT a conservative. Dress it up any way you want, but he was as horrible a candidate (from a conservative perspective) as O’Donnell was from an electability perspective. That’s a fair assessment I think. You think O’Donnell was a bad candidate. I think Mike Castle was a bad candidate.
As for the “purist” argument, that’s a crock. O’Donnell wasn’t selected simply because she was ideologically pure. She was selected because Mike Castle was ideologically a non-entity as far as conservatives go. An 80% conservative who was far more polished, experienced and electable than either O’Donnell or Castle would have done better. Of course, by 80% conservative I really mean making government smaller 80% of the time. For some strange reason, 80% conservative for moderate/centrists seems to mean agreeing with Democrats (and expanding government) 80% of the time.
If the Republican leadership wants to win races, then maybe they need to work to nominate candidates who are more palatable to BOTH factions in the Republican Party. That’s the key point that almost everyone misses. We conservatives don’t want to support hacks like Castle any more than the moderates want to support ideologically pure political neophytes like O’Donnell. THEREFORE, the Republican leadership needs to find and promote candidates that are a better fit from both perspectives rather than serving up ideological trash like Arlen Spectre!
Give us candidates that are ideologically acceptable AND electable, and the party can unify to win elections. That, my FRiend, is key to winning races AND reigning in big government! I only hope the Republican Party is listening.
>>What the heck are you talking about? When did I say any such thing? <<
When did I say that I supported this woman?
At least I was asking a question and not labeling YOU.
A.Hun: “”Conservatives” gave the Dems control in 2006, and are determined to keep them in power at the expense of moderate Repubs (RINOs).”
Then I assume you are not a conservative, so I wonder why you are posting on Free Republic.
The problem is that we are in a war, it is as if we are on two battle lines. In Delaware the chosen leader was Christine O’Donnell. So Colonel Rove decides that the commander can’t win the battle, and takes his troops and goes over to the other side and starts shooting at us.
In judging his actions we do not consider if his judgment is correct and the battle would be lost (that was Benedict Arnold’s judgment of Washington and the Revolution). We do not care if he actually causes the defeat (Arnold was wrong).
What we do know is that he is a traitor to the cause, and we would be idiots to ever trust him again.
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