Posted on 05/17/2014 6:14:53 AM PDT by cotton1706
Karl Rove, the prominent Republican strategist, said Friday that Tim Donnelly will be a liability for Republicans nationwide if the tea party favorite finishes second in the gubernatorial primary election and advances to a November runoff against Gov. Jerry Brown.
"If the California Republican Party has as the leading candidate, the leading statewide candidate on the ballot this year somebody who has said the outrageous things that he's said and prone to the outrageous behavior that he routinely engages in, it will be used to tarnish not only the California Republican Party, but they'll throw it at everybody else on the ballot, and everybody else will, across the country, disavow the guy," Rove told the conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on his show.
Rove said, "Every time he goes out and says something, and as we've seen, Mr. Donnelly is quite prone to sharing the weird recesses and corners of his mind, it could be really problematic for the GOP."
Rove's remarks come a day after former California Gov. Pete Wilson issued a similar warning, and other prominent Republicans have rebuked Donnelly, a former member of the anti-illegal immigration Minuteman Project. Among other controversies, he pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors after carrying a loaded gun into Ontario International Airport in 2012 and tried recently to tie his opponent, Neel Kashkari, to Islamic law.
Donnelly has dismissed warnings against him as coming from elite Republicans out of touch with the party's base.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.sacbee.com ...
“What kind of guy carries a loaded gun into an airport? Please don’t try to defend the indefensible”
Check the Constitution, it’s his right as an American citizen.
He should be keeping his snout out of GOP primaries. If he or his "consulting company" (read PR) is hired to endorse and promote someone, fine. But he appears to be hired also by unknowns who want a smear job done on someone, particularly someone the Tea Partiers like.
And Fox gives Rove constant exposure to build him up like he's some kind of elder statesman, a guru, a loveable little fuzz ball, the ultimate expert on all things political....and "fair and balanced", doncha know !
In addition to being told to "shut up", he should be exposed.....and we should try to find out who's paying him or his "consulting company" for his smear jobs during the lead-up to the primary.
Rove is a honey-tongued hired hit man in a Brooks Brothers suit, like Carville, who is also afforded regular exposure by Fox....and who is an advance man and shill for Hillary.
I think both Fox "analysts" (Rove and Carville) have definite conflicts of interests in their appearances on the Fox shows. They're both using Fox for propaganda purpose on behalf of their "consulting" paying customers....with the end result being that GOP conservatives will be "hit" by both of them on TV and elsewhere.
Leni
You are telling me that, as an American citizen, he has the right to carry a loaded gun with him to the airport? Is that what you are telling me?
If 5-6 passengers on each of the 911 planes had been open carrying we would never had had that disaster. Or the resulting police state we all lament on a daily basis. An unloaded gun does you no good.
I have, mostly when going on trips to places where (1) my CCW is accepted, and (2) where I might be around ugly areas.
I would carry to the airport, go into the mens room, unload and put it into the carrying case, declare it with my checked bags. At the destination, I would take my bags to the mens room, load up, put it in my pocket, and go to the taxi stand.
This so called political genius turned what should have been two walk off wins into an extra inning affair and come from behind victory.
His failure to properly message the good things that Bush was doing set the stage for Obama.
I too wish the cretin would just go away.
No he doesn’t have the right neither do Americans have the right to exceed speed limits on roadways; but they do, all the time.
It’s a minor infraction. He had the right to take his gun to the airport as long as it was unloaded. He forgot; he was forgetful; makes his human. How many of us have rushed to the airport and forgot something?
This is a minor incident blown out of proportion by Bushites who always jump up and down ranting about how their shit don’t stink. They never seem to get it through their thick craniums that they piss Americans off with the holier-than-thou hypocrisy.
So if you were in CA, you would vote in the primary for Neel Kashkari vice Donnelly because of the gun incident at the airport? I just don't view this as a big issue. He forgot it was in his bag. I have no idea what circumstances obtained when he was preparing for the trip. I believe he did forget it was in the bag, don't you?
I am not a politician, but I maintain only one weapon so that I can be responsible for it at all times. Extra important for a politician. In all fairness, I’m sure a personal weapon is important for a politician’s security.
This is really a tempest in a teapot. It has nothing to do with his character or ability to govern. They are also going after him because of his youthful indiscretions and a brother who committed suicide.
"Donnelly, 47, was born in Atlanta and raised in Berkley, Mich., a suburb of Detroit. He was the third-oldest of 14 brothers and sisters in a family that relied on food stamps for about six months and, Donnelly said, his high-school-age wages to buy milk. He told the Daily Press of Victorville in 2010 that he “learned economics at the dinner table – supply and demand.” And he has joked in campaign appearances about siblings fighting over his room when he left home.
A self-described “nerd” in high school, Donnelly said in an interview he “had a kid assault me over and over and over again” his freshman year. One day, Donnelly said, his father told him to break the boy’s nose, and Donnelly took his advice.
“I picked him up with one arm and I threw him up against the locker, and I said, ‘I’m ready to fight today,’” Donnelly said. “And he crumpled, and I never had another problem with him.’”
But social life still proved difficult. The teenage Donnelly bought Jordache jeans with money he earned himself.
“Well, I had people calling me ... names because I had good style,” he said. “And I had an altercation in the hallway with a kid, and I thought, ‘You know what? There’s got to be something better.’ ”
Donnelly enrolled at a private Christian school and worked several jobs, including in a kiln room at a pottery shop and as a janitor at the school, to pay his tuition. He said his parents kicked him out of the house a month before his high school graduation. They reconciled, and Donnelly said he cannot recall exactly what precipitated the original argument.
Donnelly’s mother died in 2000. His father, who lives in South Carolina, did not return telephone calls for comment.
Following graduation, Donnelly attended University of Michigan for a year. Last week, he acknowledged that he was involved in a criminal case there after The Sacramento Bee questioned him about the incident.
“I got drunk with my buddy, and we left his Sony Walkman in the hallway, and somebody took it,” Donnelly told the “John and Ken” talk radio show. “So we started looking for somebody who might have it, and we wound up breaking into somebody else’s room and stealing a stereo from them.”
Donnelly said he and his friend called the police themselves when they “sobered up.” He said the case was expunged but that “the consequences were severe enough for me that I basically quit drinking not long after that.”
Despite the support of conservative activists, many members of the GOP’s professional and donor classes fear Donnelly, the Legislature’s most outspoken gun rights and anti-illegal-immigration advocate, could damage the party’s efforts to appeal to Latinos, independents and social moderates.
This resistance – including the opening of an independent expenditure committee for Kashkari by Brent Lowder, a former executive director of the state party – is one Donnelly has not previously had to overcome. His Assembly district, which runs to the Nevada and Arizona borders, is the safest of conservative enclaves, and representing local values – not moderation or compromise – is rewarded.
“I think he’s based the right way,” said Rick Willsie, the head deacon at the church Donnelly attends on a wooded lot in town. “He has a God mentality.”
Religion is a persistent part of Donnelly’s public persona. On the night he first won election to the Assembly, Donnelly told the Mountain News, his local newspaper, “The bottom line is the glory is the Lord’s, the battle is the Lord’s and the battle lies ahead.”
He prays before speeches, and he has said the Republican Party needs to “reconnect with the church.”
Donnelly’s mother was deeply religious, and after Donnelly’s brother Paul E. Donnelly hanged himself in a Laurens County, S.C., jail in 2000, Donnelly spent time during the next eight years conducting a Bible study and life-skills class at a facility for inmates near his home.
In talking about his brother’s death, Donnelly suggested he, too, has had suicidal thoughts, but did not elaborate.
Donnelly has focused far less on immigration in his current race.
“I think we have to stop pandering, thinking that there’s a different message because of someone’s skin color, because the colors of freedom are red, white and blue,” Donnelly told a meeting of the California Republican National Hispanic Assembly. “What I believe people want is they want to live free, and they want to get the government out of their way, so that we can all enjoy the bounties of liberty.”
Donnelly has struggled to raise money since announcing his candidacy last year, and with just more than two months until the primary election he is operating nearly on fumes. In his most recent campaign statement, on Monday, Donnelly reported cash on hand of less than $11,000, a fraction of his opponents’ holdings and less than many candidates for city councils would find sufficient. Kashkari has more than $900,000, while Brown has nearly $20 million.
Still, Donnelly is holding his own in public opinion. Though trailing Brown by an enormous margin, Donnelly, with 10 percent support among likely voters, leads his closest Republican competitors by 8 percentage points, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released last week.
For Donnelly, the stakes are high. Publicity from his campaign could better position him for a potential run for Congress. But Donnelly abandoned his re-election bid for Assembly to run for governor, and if he loses he will be out of a job.
Donnelly said he is running to win. It is a quixotic effort, but campaigning appears to give him a lift.
Yep. An armed society is a polite society.
1. Jesus said something about being sinless as a prerequisite to casting Rovian-type stones, yet Mr. Rove is a ethical dolt.
2. The only person entitled to cast these otherwise cravenly-political petrocites died some two millennia ago.
(rewritten for clarity)
Karl Rove, the prominent Republican strategist, said Friday that RONALD REAGAN will be a liability for Republicans nationwide if the tea party favorite finishes second in the gubernatorial primary election and advances to a November runoff against Gov. Jerry Brown.
“If the California Republican Party has as the leading candidate, the leading statewide candidate on the ballot this year somebody who has said the outrageous things that he’s said and prone to the outrageous behavior that he routinely engages in, it will be used to tarnish not only the California Republican Party, but they’ll throw it at everybody else on the ballot, and everybody else will, across the country, disavow the guy,” Rove told the conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on his show.
"Many members of the GOP’s professional and donor classes fear Donnelly, the Legislature’s most outspoken gun rights and anti-illegal-immigration advocate, could damage the party’s efforts to appeal to Latinos, independents and social moderates.
If I recall, he's been that way since the very beginning of his career. He was a Texas volunteer for Poppy Bush's campaign for President, and was a rabid fighter against Reagan's volunteers.
Does anyone here seriously believe that Donnelly has ANY chance in the general elections in November?
The Dems would use his win in the primary to tar and feather all other Republican/tea-party candidates. Just think back at the last few elections where the Dems turned the most minor negative issues into “big deals” — that’s how they won majority in the Senate.
It’s time to think strategically -— losing is NOT a winning strategy. The losers have no impact on anything.
The candidate doesn’t matter as much as the GOTV. If you can’t get Republicans to vote, you lose.
Pray America is waking up
Occam’s Razor (the most obvious answer) in this case would be that Rove the RINO is taking money from our enemy. Democrats maybe, liberals, probably. My guess would be a group working to promote illegal amnesty reform.
I Hate the Pubs here in CA! They willingly abandon us to the obscurity of minority status and then use us for campaign funds.
“It’s time to think strategically -— losing is NOT a winning strategy. The losers have no impact on anything.”
Golly gee, then why is Rove pushing Kashkari, who he already said would lose??
I say go for broke! Milquetoast moderate candidates do not win. Witness November 2012 when all the Establishment candidates went down in flames, and they were all “thinking strategically.”
5.56mm
That is exactly right!! They said the same things about Reagan in 1966.
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