Karl Rove Says Herman Cain Campaign ‘Not Gonna Have a Nice Ending’

Posted on | October 14, 2011 | 57 Comments

Let me be blunt in saying that I am thoroughly familiar with every argument against Herman Cain’s candidacy, and far more aware than most political journalists of the organizational challenges (to put it mildly) of the Cain campaign. Last night I was on the phone with my buddy Ali Akbar as we ~~bemoaned~~ ~~bewailed~~ ~~bitched about~~ discussed the ~~hopeless clusterfuck~~ organizational challenges of Cain’s staff situation. While all campaigns go through their rough spots, and I’ve seen campaigns win elections despite serious errors, Herman Cain’s campaign now faces two huge problems:

They’re less than 90 days away from the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Even if the Nevada situation can be worked out to keep New Hampshire from jumping to December, 90 days from Iowa is still a damned short time to put together an effective ground game in all 99 counties in Iowa.
They’re up against Team Romney. Say what you will about Mitt, his campaign staff is a ruthlessly disciplined machine, and they’ve got about a 5-to-1 fund-raising advantage over Cain.

As I explained to Ali, if the Cain campaign were to raise $100,000 every day, that would be $3 million a month or about $8 million between now and Jan. 3. The problem is that the Perry campaign’s sitting on something like $15 million and Romney raised $10 million in the last quarter. Even if the Perry campaign didn’t raise another dime, they could spend $5 million a month between now Jan. 3, and that’s a heckuva lot of TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Whatever Romney’s cash-on-hand figures, he’s got the big bundlers like Georgette Mosbacher behind him, and will have no shortage of cash for TV ads.

How can the Cain campaign possibly hope to compete with that? If you just look at it as a problem of simple math, by the ordinary logic of campaign operations, Cain would be doomed beyond hope even if his staff were as efficient as Team Romney. So I cannot necessarily say that Rove’s basic calculation is wrong. Insofar as normal politics is concerned, Rove’s prediction of an unhappy ending for the Cain campaign seems smart.

But normal politics has taken a savage beating the past few years, and it’s hard to calculate the odds of success for the kind of “outside-the-box” campaign that Cain and his staff have been talking about since December. Nobody expected, 10 months ago, that Herman Cain would be where he is now, neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney at the front of the field. Hell, nobody expected this even one month ago, when Cain’s poll numbers were stuck in single digits. It’s been only 20 days since Cain shocked the world with his victory in the Sept. 24 Florida straw poll, so everybody’s still trying to get their heads wrapped around the concept of “Herman Cain, Republican contender.”

If you’ve got a Road to the White House map, we’re currently off at the edge in uncharted seas where the legend reads, “Here Be Dragons.”

And when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

It just occurred to me that today, Oct. 14, is the two-year anniversary of the day in 2009 when Lisa De Pasquale invited me to join a conference call with a guy named Doug Hoffman. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

Miracles can happen, and what happened in NY-23 two years ago was a rare kind of inspirational moment in politics. And when it was over, a new kind of campaign paradigm had been created:

Yates Walker ate breakfast in the Blue Moon Café on Main Street in Saranac Lake, New York, on the morning of November 4, [2009] and delivered an after-action report on the battle that had just been fought in the upstate 23rd District.
“We took a CPA from 9 percent to 46 percent in two and a half weeks,” said Walker, a young veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division who had been hired 18 days earlier to work on Doug Hoffman’s congressional campaign staff. “I couldn’t be prouder.”
He fell 5,000 votes short of defeating Democrat Bill Owens, but Hoffman’s surprising surge in the closing weeks of the three-way special election in upstate New York had, in Walker’s words, turned the bespectacled accountant into “an electric symbol of conservatism.” . . .

Read the whole thing in case you’ve forgotten that magical two and a half weeks. Karl Rove never saw that coming, either, and if Herman Cain is going to beat Mitt Romney, his campaign is going to have make that kind of lightning strike twice. Such were the thoughts that came to my mind in the wee hours this morning, after I had filed my latest American Spectator column:

Hickory trees were blazing brilliant gold in the forest surrounding my home on the western slope of South Mountain as I stepped outside Thursday afternoon to take a call on my cellphone from a well-informed source. My enjoyment of the autumn scenery was diminished only slightly by the cool drizzly overcast weather, but much more by the shadows of gloom gathering over the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, which was the reason for the phone call.
After listening with great interest, I walked inside to the dining room table, picked up a pen and asked my source to repeat the information which I scrawled into a notebook: “Rubio [chief] of staff — CESAR — used to be w/ Romney’s campaign … used his contacts to push primary to 31st because they want Romney in.” A couple more phone calls to D.C. and Florida, a few minutes of online research, and I had an exclusive: “Top Rubio Staffer Reportedly Pushed for Early Florida Primary to Help Romney.” Perhaps not the kind of story Matt Drudge would consider worthy of a banner headline, but a key piece of the puzzle surrounding events that have hopelessly scrambled the 2012 schedule. . . .

Please read the whole thing. We’re on the road to political Armageddon, folks, and the next stop on this road is Las Vegas. Hit the freaking tip jar!

Category: Doug Hoffman, Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Herman Cain, Karl Rove, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney

Comments

57 Responses to “Karl Rove Says Herman Cain Campaign ‘Not Gonna Have a Nice Ending’”

Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:21 am

I take what Rove says with a grain of salt. Remember he is the one who talked Bush into doing the prescription drug entitlement so he could endear himself to old folks in Florida for the 2004 election.
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:23 am

Odds are Romney beats Cain. I get that. I also get that Cain is the better candidate. If you care about stuff like conservative issues.

TV pundits have to lo0k smart and not make predictions that don’t end up happening. I hope Cain embarasses them all.
Bob Belvedere
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:24 am

Lock up your daughters; lock up your wives: Fear And Loathing rides again!
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:30 am

Romney’s been “pre disastered?”

Mark Kirkorian goes on to say:

“I’m not in the tank for the guy (though barring a dead girl or a live boy he’s got the nomination sewn up), but Romneycare just doesn’t strike me as being as big a problem as some people make it out to be, which may be why it hasn’t hurt him as much as you might have thought.”

Hellava way to pick a nominee GOP Establishment.
steve benton
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:34 am

Cain’s budget plan is DOA. Only in magic fairy land would Herman magically get 2/3 congressional approval for a new sales tax. I hate Romney with a purple passion, but only in fairytale land is Herman going to ride in and save the day. This continuing fascination with Cain is an iron cinch guarantee that Romney gets the nomination.
Karl Rove: Herman Cain Can't Sustain Momentum - The POH Diaries
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:36 am

[…] Linked by Stacy McCain, who knows a thing or two about the Herman Cain campaign. Thanks, […]
McGehee
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:41 am

Romney getting the nomination is increasingly an iron cinch that Obama is re-elected.
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:45 am

Michael Walsh at NRO makes more sense than Kirkorian.

There’s a lot of chatter on NRO today about Mitt Romney, most of which boils down to the same depressing fact: nobody much loves the former Massachusetts (one-term) governor, but everybody’s getting resigned to the fact that he may be inevitable. I find this profoundly depressing.

As I’ve written elsewhere, there’s more than a whiff of a nervous used-car salesman about Say Anything Mitt. The man wants to make the sale so desperately it’s almost comical; he’s like a character from a Barry Levinson movie or a play by David Mamet, minus the Anglo-Saxonisms. (Just try to imagine Mitt doing to the classic Alec Baldwin scene from Glengarry Glen Ross.)…

In 1994 he got clobbered by Ted Kennedy’s vicious, mendacious, and absolutely predictable hatchet job on him during the Senate campaign, and although he won the governorship in 2002 (Massachusetts has something of a tradition of electing liberal Republican governors to ever so slightly rein in the legion of Democratic crooks who infest the State House on Beacon Hill), he never struck me as much more than a better-looking William Weld. For all his improvement as a candidate, he’s still the same old Mitt.

Heading into an election with an extraordinarily weak incumbent, whose only real constituencies now are the poor and the media, is Romney really the best we can do?
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 9:47 am

I will support Romney if he gets the nominee, but he is not the best candidate to ake on Obama. And he is not the best the GOP has. Not by a long shot.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:04 am

Rove’s strength, as I understand it, is in the nitty gritty of the technical details of running a campaign, i.e., targeting certain neighborhoods or demographics. In that respect, I respect his insights. And maybe the prescription drug thing did make a difference in 2004 (NB for the reading impaired: this is not an endorsement).

I’ve never thought him to be anyone worthy of listening to about the merits of policy, and I doubt he has the same access to resources and data that he did when he was running a campaign, so I think his insights are probably less accurate than they could be. Still, he has experience in the field of campaigning, so I guess it just depends on how much you attribute to honest analysis vs wishcasting (or conspiracy, if that’s how you roll).

While I think Cain’s staying power has increased tremendously of late, his organization weaknesses have to lengthen the odds. This sort of thing reminds me of when Palin was saying how unconventional this campaign would be. I think there’s merit in that, but I think you still need the old fashioned organization.

Thinking that everything will suddenly be completely different reminds me of the people (every few years) who say that we’ve finally tamed the business cycle, or that history is over.
Tennwriter
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:19 am

Well then, Santorum or back to Bachmann.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:25 am

I pray daily for Michele to get it going again… sigh

Real bad luck with Perry taking away her victory lustre, and for what…

Since then, she’s made a few mistakes herself- but this is the ONLY candidate in the race that ticks all the boxes for me, fwiw

Frustration here after no bump following decent debate performance… I would vote Cain if I had to, really like him actually- just wish he had a little more interest/background in foriegn policy, and I too hate the idea of ANY new federal revenue streams, especially a VAT
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:31 am

“…maybe the prescription drug thing did make a difference in 2004”

I do not believe it did make a difference. But if that is the criteria for being a GOP president (if it helps me get elected it is a good thing on something–expension of entitlements that people have not even partially paid into– that we should immediately reject out of hand) we are so fucked.
Susan Ally
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:40 am

The fact that the typical American voter depends upon candidates raising hundreds of millions of dollars to buy TV ADs says more about the paltry mentality of the typical American voter than it does about the political system.

The typical American voter deserves what Obama is doing to them; if Americans are content to remain stuck in their barcaloungers with their bamboozled eyeballs glued to their TV to tell them what to do then misery is their just reward.

I no longer will send money to fund political TV ads for those highly addicted to their idiot box.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:44 am

Of course, one theory is that certain strageties that POSSIBLY helped GW Bush in 2004 might also have hurt the GOP over the long-run.

Another point: Rove being expert at the “nitty gritty of the technical details,” but now wanting to spend his time pontificating on the sexier matters of social policy, big picture political strategy, and sociopolitical trends, is perhaps all too typical these days. People don’t want to do nitty gritty work any more; they want to work at something that they perceive to be more important, meaningful, rewarding – never mind that they were actually far more productive when they used to do the unimportant, tedious, and monotonous tasks.

But I digress. You’re right that good old fashioned money politics still very much matter, but WHY do we believe that it’s so important for the GOP to win elections? Obviously, we must end SCOAMF’s reign, but how much longer can we afford reruns of Rove 1999 – 2004?
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:47 am

Well, the criteria for any President is to get elected. Inevitably, you have to compromise on something, or at least accept that you won’t be able to do certain things. I agree with you on the prescription drug stuff, though.

The progressive tendencies of some Republicans are really painful. The Democrats are so obvious and over the top that they’re easy to fight against, but sometimes we (people in general) put faction over principle, or at least lose sight of them, too easily.

But FFS, this RINO name calling business has gotten out of hand.
Jorge Emilio Emrys Landivar
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:49 am

Cain also peels away 15% of the normally solid black voting block. Thats phenomenal.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:50 am

Kirkorian is right, Obamneycare is not a big problem for Mitt.

No doubt, Romney’s family will be able to access the very highest quality health care resources in the future, whether in the United States or abroad. Mitt and his loved ones will never be dependent on the authority of the Obamneycare death panels.

Hence, Obamneycare is not “as big a problem [for Mitt] as some people make it out to be.”
Jorge Emilio Emrys Landivar
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:51 am

Anyway the question is will Rove’s allies make sure that Cain comes to naught?
Gm93003
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:52 am

Why are we letting 3 pissant states and liberal voters (through open primaries) have that much influence over the R nomination?
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:54 am

Hey, steve, I’ll definitely support Perry if he gets the nomination. Hell, if Romney’s the guy, I’ll swallow a barrel full of castor oil and vote for that bum, too.

So, will you support Cain when he gets the nomination?
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:56 am

Obviously, we must end SCOAMF’s reign, but how much longer can we afford reruns of Rove 1999 – 2004?

Dunno, but a lot longer than we can afford SCOAMF. It’s partly the age old conundrum of voting for something that’s less bad (or maybe just a little good) over the real bad, or not voting at all (and you might as well include the Libertarian voters here).

I mean, the idea of a real catharsis by letting the progressives completely melt down is attractive if you think we could start over and purge ourselves of progressivism. But I think you’re fooling yourself at that point. Those people are still going to be around when the new system is put together. And we’re probably underestimating the ability of the system to continue to hobble along. Look at Europe. It won’t even let little Greece go.

Also, what about the mean time? What about my kids? Seems too much like suicide to me.
rosalie
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:58 am

And is he really any different than O? I think not.
Don H
October 14th, 2011 @ 10:59 am

Rove is deep Republican establishment. He has no use, time, or empathy of outsiders. In some ways he’s kind of like Dick Morris, strong on details very weak on conclusions.

Also, he is very disingenuous when he wants to be. To attract more independent voters, he made a visible outreach to Hispanics. That showed the independents that Bush wasn’t a hard hearted bigot and allowed milquetoast fence-sitters to vote Republican.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:01 am

I agree about the gratuitous RINO labelling, but where does Joe mention RINOs?

If I find myself labelling over 50-percent of the GOP as RINOs, then – numerically speaking, at least – isn’t it me (and people like me) who is the RINO?

Now, obviously a lot of GOP pols are full of it when they call themselves “conservatives,” but their kind has long had a strong presence in the GOP.
Finrod Felagund
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:04 am

Rove is right about one thing– Herman Cain’s campaign is not going to have a nice ending for Rove and a lot of other pundits. They can’t conceive of the possibility of a Republican administration where them and all their kin are left on the outside looking in.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:07 am

I don’t believe that we can purge ourselves of progressivism. I believe (hope?) that the political culture will undergo a seismic shift.

There was a “progressive” seismic shift roughly between 1910 – 1940.

We saw a temporary, semi-seismic shift to the right under Reagan, but now we need a more powerful one.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:09 am

Yes.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:10 am

Yes, it was gratuitous, and not really in reply to Joe. I should have made that clearer, though it wasn’t totally off topic, either.
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:22 am

When Karl Rove is laid face down in his anonymous pauper’s grave, I will personally take up a collection to have a headstone engraved with Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment raised above him…
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:24 am

You typed ‘Democrats” without putting *spit* next to it! You a RINO! *g*

Rove’s not a RINO, he’s just a chip of the cynical mercenary plaque that’s choking the heart of the GOP…
Tennwriter
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:25 am

Cain’s biggest problem is not the organization. That is countered by Romney’s 70% who keep on saying…Go Away Romney, Its Us, Its Not You, But We’re Going To Get a Restraining Order Soon…

Cain’s biggest problem is the 9% Nat’l Sales Tax.

Take your average voter…who is in a recession…who will end up paying more taxes to the gov’t.

I understand the logic of cutting taxes to boost economic growth, but thats a faith-based thing (and it has good evidence to support that faith) whereas more cash to Washington is completely obvious.

The guy making 40k a year, who is already facing higher gas prices, and food inflation, and job uncertainty is told ‘Trust us, this will roar the economy back, and the gas prices will go down, and …’. Even if all that is true (and a lot of it depends on other actions taken and succeeding like drilling in ANWR), its in the future, and the key fact is That Guy Does Not Trust Pols whether Right or Left (and really, who here disagrees with that notion?). More cash from his already hurting pocketbook is Now.

The Republican Party has to do a lot first to gain the trust of the People before they propose a massive broadening of the tax base. Cut that guy’s gas bill for his car and his home in half, and then we’ll talk.
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 11:26 am

Apparently Mark Krikorian wouldn’t recognize a red-hot poker if the Log Cabin Republicans shoved it up his asterisk.
Steve in TN
October 14th, 2011 @ 12:25 pm

Had a reporter from the LA Times contact me after one of my “anti-Cain” tweets and she asked me that question.

Of course. I’m 99.9% positive I’ll vote for whomever the GOP nominee is. Obama must go.
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 12:28 pm

What is enraging, and the greatest argument as to why the GOP ‘leadership’ has to go, is that they are so consumed by the DC mentality that they actually see being willing to throw the election to the Democrats to keep their own grubby offices as a SMART political move. The actual running of the country is nothing but a side-effect of their literal office politics.
McGehee
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:11 pm

The only way Romney can be better than Obama is by defeating Obama on Election Day. And that just won’t happen.
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:22 pm

I am not a fan of the RINO label. But I am a strong proponent of “deal breakers.” They should not be so broad as to be unreasonable, but any Republican promoting expansion of entitlements (especially completely unfunded ones like the prescription drug benefit) should be horsewhipped.

Sorry, Rove is a craven one at times. And he deserves to be called on it.
Pete
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:23 pm

Interestingly, HC’s train is moving – Rove (I think) is last year’s news. (Platitunidus – can’t think outside the box.) Herman may show the world that he can attain another one of his objectives -just like all the others.
Joe
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:23 pm

Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment is not a suicide pact.

Expansion of entitlements is not acceptable.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:30 pm

We need more of this and less OH NOES ROMNEY UGH ME STAY HOME NOW crap.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:31 pm

It may not be a big problem among the electorate in the general or even in the primary races but for people who find it a problem it is an absolute disqualifier. The mandate is indefensible in every way and at every level there is no tenth amendment states rights defense just as there are no valid tenth amendment states rights arguments justifying restrictions on free speech or the right to bear arms.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:44 pm

Even Conservatives for Cthulhu will probably vote for Romney when push comes to shove. The fact it could come down to having to choose between zero and mittens is a sad commentary on this country, this electorate and our species.

I’m still not convinced he can get the nomination. His polling never gets above what, 29%? No matter who is up or down no matter who is in or out, Romney barely clears one quarter of the sample except in NH. I submit that whoever is the second to last man standing gets the nomination.
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 1:50 pm

If he can’t get more than 29% of Republicans how does he get 51% of Americans?
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 2:06 pm

So…a ceiling on support in a multi-way primary works out to a ceiling on support in a general election? This is your analysis?
Anonymous
October 14th, 2011 @ 2:26 pm

My analysis is that there is a three way race at the moment, undecided, Romney and everybody else. Romney may top 30% when people have to make a choice in the primaries but not until. Think of Romney as the incumbent. In fact his pathway to the nomination is remarkably similar to Obama’s pathway to reelection.
CalMark
October 14th, 2011 @ 2:55 pm

Karl Rove knows a lot about “not nice.” On the GOP side, he’s the King of it.
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 3:00 pm

No, but letting Karl Rove get at your back seems to be.
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 3:03 pm

Seriously does anyone remember similar displays of backstabbing as we’ve seen from the likes of Rove, Castle, the NYS GOP, etc., coming from the Democrats? And it’s not just an East Coast thing; I’ve seen similar behavior in mainline GOPers in CA.
Richard Mcenroe
October 14th, 2011 @ 3:07 pm

Obviously, the priority is unelecting the SCOAMF. Above all. But against the chance of Romney being elected we should all redouble our efforts to get the greatest number of solid conservatives elected possible, so that Romney faces the most recalcitrant GOP we can muster when, as I would fear, he forgets to govern as a Republican…
Christy Waters
October 14th, 2011 @ 3:16 pm

While Herman Cain’s campaign has it’s challenges (and I won’t deny those), Cain’s got the highest positive intensity numbers of any of the candidates. So, while Romney may have a staff that runs like a well-oiled machine, Herman Cain’s got a flood of people who are willing to devote their own, unpaid time to furthering the Cain train, through the social networking sites, campaign events, and old-fashioned methods such as handing out push cards at Walmart or writing letters to local newspapers.

In an age when time is at such a premium, the fact that so many people are willing to volunteer theirs to promote Herman Cain speaks volumes about his character, and his 40+ years of experience, including 4 turns at the executive level. The people who vote get it, and the grassroots movement behind Herman Cain is growing. If the other candidates, political pundits, or those in the media choose to shrug it off, then they do so at their own peril.