GOP Civil War: Karl Rove vs. Tea Party

[Lakhota]

By SAHIL KAPUR

A battle between Karl Rove and the far right is the latest front in a growing civil war for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and clarifies the contours of the struggle.

On one side are the establishment Republicans, who recognize the changing face of the American electorate and want their party to win elections in the future. In this battle, they are represented by Rove and his new Conservative Victory Project, unveiled this week, which is targeting unelectable (read: extremely conservative) candidates in Republican Senate primaries.

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” Steven Law, who will run Rove’s new effort, told the New York Times. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.” Law is also president of the Rove-backed American Crossroads and CrossroadsGPS.

On the other side are the ultraconservatives, who believe the road to success involves full-fledged, uncompromising dedication to their tea party principles. These are right-wing groups like FreedomWorks and GOP Senate hopefuls like Reps. Paul Broun (GA) and Steve King (IA), who are the types of far-right candidates Rove is expected to target.

“The Conservative Victory Project represents the latest round in a fight that’s been going on for decades,” said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “Since the origins of the modern conservative movement in the mid-1950s, purists and pragmatists have been battling for dominance in the GOP.”

The latest round began when Rove sent donors a fundraising plea aimed at opposing Senate primary candidates deemed unelectable. Rove-backed American Crossroads spent $300 million trying to help Republican candidates win elections in 2012 and came up empty, arguably sunk by “legitimate rape” and other utterances by conservative Senate nominees that damaged Republican candidates across the board.

The pushback against Rove’s new PAC was fierce and swift from the right-wing apparatus.

“The Empire is striking back,” warned Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks.

Tea party-backed former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told TPM he’ll start a super PAC to counter Rove’s effort, declaring, “If Rove wants a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, bring it on.”

In the Georgia Senate race, Congressman Broun vowed not to be “intimidated” by the establishment. In Iowa, Congressman King declared that “[n]obody can bully me out of running for the U.S. Senate, not even Karl Rove and his hefty war chest.”

RedState’s Erick Erickson wrote: “I dare say any candidate who gets this group’s support should be targeted for destruction by the conservative movement.”

Brent Bozell of the conservative Media Research Center slammed Rove’s group, calling it “shamelessly” named, arguing that right-wing candidates like Ted Cruz (TX), Marco Rubio (FL), and Pat Toomey (PA) have won Senate seats. In response, Rove’s spokesman Jonathan Collegio called Bozell a “hater.”

More: Rove Vs. Tea Party Battle Reflects Deeper GOP Civil War | TPMDC

 

[Lakhota]

May the best nut win!

 

[tinydancer]

The Tea Party candidates won. Rove didn't back a single winner.

 

[Lakhota]

Dick Morris should be involved in this war. Where is he...? Where is Palin...?

 

[tinydancer]

Palin's still going strong.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has stayed largely out of the limelight in the past few months, but her social media presence is still going strong.

Now the onetime GOP vice presidential nominee, who has almost 3.5 million likes on Facebook, is appealing to her followers on behalf of an American pastor from Idaho held prisoner in Iran.

Here's part of the article:\

For more than a month, Palin was silent on social media about #SaveSaeed.

Then Friday morning, Palin’s daughter, former “Dancing With the Stars” competitor Bristol Palin, wrote a blog post urging readers to sign a petition to have Abedini freed, and tweet using the hashtag and pray for him and his family.

The former Alaska governor later linked to her daughter’s post on both Facebook and Twitter.

The #SaveSaeed website claimed to have more than 170,000 signatures as of 4 p.m. Friday. Videos promoting the petition say the group’s goal is to reach 300,000 signatures before it presents the petition to the United Nation and the European Commission of Human Rights.

Other celebrities have flocked to the cause, including Christian singer-songwriters Steven Curtis Chapman and TobyMac.

A Twitter account claiming to be Naghmeh Abedini, the pastor’s wife, tweeted her thanks to those who had signed the petition Friday.

Please keep fighting for my husband Saeed who has been imprisoned in #Iran for his faith in Jesus. Every prayer counts. #savesaeed God bless

— Naghmeh Abedini (@NaghmehAbedini) February 8, 2013

Sarah Palin Asks Followers to #SaveSaeed - ABC News

 

[MarcATL]

I don't know who will win.
However, I'm leaning towards The Establishment.
The Establishment seems to end up on the saner side of things, even if by mistake.

 

[Lakhota]

As GOP Splits, Whose Side Is Fox News On?

 

[JoeB131]

Here's the overall problem I have with this.

When Karl and his boys talk about the TEA Party, they mean Murdoch and Akin, guys who essentially self-destructed when they decided that the word "Rape" needed to be qualified with an adjective to validate their outlandish positions on Abortion.

What Karl doesn't advocate is actually changing the GOP's position on abortion. Because if you take away the God Bullshit, and those working class Christians are just voting on economic issues, they might as well vote for Democrats. The GOP Has nothing to offer them.

The second problem I see is that these weren't the only two guys who self-destructed because they said something stupid. Mike Hoekstra was the Establishment pick for Senate in Michigan he had a fairly good chance of winning, until he bought a Superbowl ad that was openly racist.

Third thing- Akin wasn't even TEA Party. The Tea Party supported Steelman in the primary.

Fourth and final point.... at the end of the day, the guy most responsible for the debacle of 2012 was Mitt Romney. The fish rots at the head, and his dumb statements about "I like to fire people" and "I don't care about the 47%" really destroyed the party's chances all the way down the line.

Not that I think he's wrong that the GOP needs to get its crazy in check, but it needs to do so across the board, not just with the TEA Party.

 

[Stephanie]

this has already been posted

trolls can't search?

 

[MarcATL]

The Republican Party haven't put down the shovels as yet.

All the Democratic Party has to do now that they their opponent self-destructing is, simply stand back and get out of the way.

 

[MarcATL]

As GOP Splits, Whose Side Is Fox News On?

This is so true.

The Republicans are quite divided right now, even on here, which is mostly radical RWers you can see quite a few disagreeing with their next move/approach.

They are arguing over going even further to the harsh right, or being more centrist. They are also fighting about sticking and pushing more social policies, or strictly keeping it on economics.

They need to get it together and have a unified front and message.

 

[TheOldSchool]

Remember when the GOP loved Rove? I guess now it's convenient for them to completely change their principles, and pretend like the Bush years never happened lol.

 

[MarcATL]

Remember when the GOP loved Rove? I guess now it's convenient for them to completely change their principles, and pretend like the Bush years never happened lol.

They've been pretending the Bush years didn't happen the instant Obama took Office.

Hannity was still blaming Clinton for crap as late as November 2008.

So at no point did the RW Establishment place blame on Bush.

Some SAY they did, but you don't see any public evidence of it.

What you DO see lots of public evidence of is lots of Bush defending. I can provide countless YouTubes of that.

 

[ArmyCowboy]

Eventually Rove and the establishment will win.

The TP started out strong but now, just two years removed from their impressive showing in 2010, they're fizzling. Not only that, but their extreme rightwing rhetoric is hurting the whole party.

 

[MarcATL]

Eventually Rove and the establishment will win.

The TP started out strong but now, just two years removed from their impressive showing in 2010, they're fizzling. Not only that, but their extreme rightwing rhetoric is hurting the whole party.

The TeaParty folks aren't the only RWers spewing hard RW radical reactionary rhetoric.

That's their main problem.

The hard RW is essentially the mainstream.

The sensible ones are in the minority.

Look at what they're saying about folks like Gen. Colin Powell.

 

[ArmyCowboy]

Eventually Rove and the establishment will win.

The TP started out strong but now, just two years removed from their impressive showing in 2010, they're fizzling. Not only that, but their extreme rightwing rhetoric is hurting the whole party.

The TeaParty folks aren't the only RWers spewing hard RW radical reactionary rhetoric.

That's their main problem.

The hard RW is essentially the mainstream.

The sensible ones are in the minority.

Look at what they're saying about folks like Gen. Colin Powell.

Not sure if the hardline rightwing nuts are the majority or if they just talk the loudest.

The reason I say this is that, after all was said and done, a guy like Romney got the GOP nomination over nuts like Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann, etc.

 

[Staidhup]

Rove is nothing more than a hack for the eastern compassionate progressive conservative wing of the GOP. The fat king of kicking the can down the road without a message, but boy is he a master of the negative.

 

[TheOldSchool]

Rove is nothing more than a hack for the eastern compassionate progressive conservative wing of the GOP. The fat king of kicking the can down the road without a message, but boy is he a master of the negative.

Interesting seeing as how he made himself in Texas.

 

[nodoginnafight]

When Karl Rove is the voice of sanity in your party - you are in some deep kaka

 

[Lakhota]

As Rand Paul mulls a presidential campaign, GOP frets over impact of disaffected voters and shifting coalitions.

Inside the cozy enclaves of GOP bonhomie—hunkered at the tables of see-and-be-seen Washington restaurants—Republican leaders are sourly predicting a party-busting independent presidential bid by a tea-party challenger, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2016.

To them, the GOP apocalypse looms larger than most realize. Dueling State of the Union rebuttals and Karl Rove’s assault on right-wing candidates are mere symptoms of an existential crisis that is giving the sturdiest Republicans heartburn.

And yet, the heart of the matter extends beyond the GOP. My conversations this week with two Republican officials, along with a Democratic strategist's timely memo, reflect a growing school of thought in Washington that social change and a disillusioned electorate threaten the entire two-party system.

More: Republican Leaders Worry Their Party Could Divide in Two - NationalJournal.com

Talkin' About Revolution: 6 Reasons Why the Two-Party System May Become Obsolete - NationalJournal.com

In Congress, Compromise Is a 4-Letter Word - NationalJournal.com