The Other McCain

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Karl Rove On Hannity

Posted on | February 6, 2013 | 23 Comments

by Smitty

The Daily Caller:

On Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former Bush deputy chief of staff Karl Rove took on detractors of his new political action committee, the Conservative Victory Project.
Rove, who founded the American Crossroads PAC that created the Conservative Victory Project, insisted that the upstart spinoff is not simply a resource for establishment candidates and incumbents.


You make the call. What I want out of the GOP is a solid reform plan. The Reverse Gramsci. Pouring a few million into TV ads and then losing seems a somewhat incomplete approach.

Via Instapundit, one discovers Mark Levin is slightly more animated.

Shapiro puts it thusly:

The question is whether this will be the party of Ronald Reagan or the party of George W. Bush.

In the latter case, I see little need to hang around, as the obituary has been done twice, by John McCain and Mitt Romney. Reform, GOP; or die, die, die.

via Prudence Paine

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Comments

  • http://alanye.com/ Dai Alanye

    There is plenty to be said for George W Bush the man, less for Dubya the politician, very little for Dubya the conservative.

    The problem with the entire Bush family from GHW on down is that they are fine Christian gentlemen but marginal otherwise. George Herbert Walker has always struck me as an example of managing to fail upwards. I can’t believe he accomplished anything worthwhile at the CIA, and he surely botched a great opportunity as President.

  • AnonymousDrivel

    The GOP is not an opposition party. It is purely reactive at this point and it’s barely that. The general response from current leadership is to castrate conservatives while offering a slightly less Statist version of any “Look, Squirrel” legislation coming from the Democrats/Progressives. As for pushing its own agenda – ANY agenda – from the Right, well it’s pretty much AWOL.

    The Rovian stagecraft is a failure. If the well-healed rich want to part with their money, well, they can be as big of a set of fools as they want to be. However, don’t expect the grassroots to join in and don’t expect to win anytime soon. I’ve stepped up for the moderate wing and been a pretty loyal supporter to the “Only A ‘Moderate’ Can Win” Philosophy – even though I disagree with the tactic – since Reagan (except when Perot ran the first time). No more. That dog don’t hunt.

    The GOP can Whig out for all I care at this point. I’m not helping one brand of tyranny replace another. The GOP has used up all of its chits.

  • ReaganiteRepublican

    This war with the TEA Party reeks of desperation… but I was pretty surprised Fox re-signed him, Boehner and/or McConnell must have made a call.

    Nonetheless, any actual conservative who doesn’t view Karl Rove as an enemy now hasn’t been paying very close attention. If Rove wants a war maybe it’s an opportunity to make better known his lousy record and scare him -and/or his donors- off and rid the party of his influence.

    Rove’s a real loser as far as I’m concerned, and as you know NO conservative

  • gvanderleun

    A fight “for the wheel of the hearse.”

    From Primordial Slack:

    While Rove and Reince fight for the wheel of the hearse, forgive me if I point out that it’s still full of dead ideas.

    The DNC is hiring young activists and paying them a living wage to do nothing more than evangelize the Gospel of Obama. Even the churches of the Right would rather build bigger barns than support “missionaries” with a living wage, so how can we expect the GOP to ever invest in the next generation? I’ve watched them ignore schools, neighborhoods, and local businesses for 40 years. But they sure have had their hand out for my money.

    http://primordialslack.com/?p=2687

  • Neo

    Having grown up in the Party of Ronald Reagan, I continually am introduced to lots of other folks who call themselves Republicans, who seem that they should belong to some other party (but obviously not the Democrat Party).
    A recent expedition into the 100th Birthday Party for Richard Nixon at the Mayflower last month added a completely different group to this series of introductions.

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  • Finrod Felagund

    Karl Rove seems like he never learned that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

  • Adobe_Walls

    The GOP has managed to disprove the adage “Where there’s life there’s hope”, in this case hope for reform.
    The GOP has never been the party of Reagan, that has been settled conclusively for quite some time.
    Let. It. Burn.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    Karl Rove is a private citizen and has no position in the Republican Party. No one in the Republican Party that I know of goes to Rove for policy ideas.

    So if you are looking for “a solid reform plan,” why would you even think of a political consultant with no office or official capacity? It makes no sense. If you want the Mustang redesigned, it does no good at all to speak to a car salesman about it, does it?

    But if futilely bashing Rove gives you a sense of accomplishment, go for it. As for those proclaiming/threatening to leave the GOP, at some point standing at the doorway spouting your grand farewell and other histrionics just gets boring. If you want to leave, LEAVE already, but STFU whining about it, mmmkay?

  • http://alanye.com/ Dai Alanye

    If I were running for national office I’d be pleased to have Rove on my side, especially if he’d work cheap. But if I were looking for political guidance I’d look elsewhere. That’s the problem as I see it–that Rove is getting too deeply into policy recommendations.

    So I’d choose Ed Rollins instead, only making sure to fire him before he quit on me and stabbed me in the posterior.

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady
  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    You seem unaware of the folks declaring they HAVE left. There have been a large number of them, some prominent bloggers. Why not stop whining about people who are disgusted with the Republican party?

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  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Bush 41 and 43 are both excellent examples of Values Conservatives. They are very poor examples of philosophically-informed conservatives.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    I used to wonder at the ineffectiveness of places like Israel, where they have so many little parties vying for control of the Knesset. But the party leaders have their constituencies in hand, and wield influence, for all the fractious bumbling they seem to inspire.

    We may be forced to such a situation here. Third, fourth, and fifth parties may be the case unless something welds them back into more unitary order. If conservatives join with sensible libertarians, Randians, and Jeffersonian Liberals, they could form a group that—at the least—rivals caucuses in congress based on skin-color or genitalia. It ought to be more powerful than groups organized around bog-standard biology.

    Governor Palin’s PAC is an example of the power of getting behind a movement, and getting a group elected that represents what that movement wants. We need to import Nigerl Farage to help us form an analogue to the UKIP.

    The two national parties control the national party apparatus, but they don’t control voters. Republicans, especially. If the Republican party leaders tell us the sky is blue, we now step outside to check.

  • http://alanye.com/ Dai Alanye

    They’re even weak on values. Each favored Right to Life rather weakly, and against the urging of their respective wives. If you can’t convince your wife of the justice of protecting the unborn, that suggests a weakness of conviction.

    Further, a value any proper conservative should maintain is a belief in fiduciary responsibilities, yet neither protected the taxpayers’ funds as he should.

  • Adobe_Walls

    The reason some continue articulating the pointlessness of holding any hope of positive results from the GOP should be quite obvious. It appears that there are still some who don’t know yet.

  • http://PrimordialSlack.com/ Joan Of Argghh!

    Thanks, Gerard! Say it with me: Republicans. They thirst for death.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    Why do those who claim to have left the party give a rat’s patootie what Rove does in GOP primaries?

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    Wouldn’t those who have given up on the GOP be better off working on their brand spanking new “True Conservative Party” instead of incessantly complaining about internal GOP matters?

    Unless of course they aren’t actually DOING anything else, and are just whiny loudmouths.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Oh, it’s not like he has friends with money or anything? It’s war. You fight or lose.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Yeah, most conservatives are really weaker than they should be on values. It’s more of an ideal to shoot for, and usually fall short of the mark. So I expect a lot of guys with a past like Romney’s and Newt’s. But that doesn’t mean they can’t get firmly on the path and learn to sell the principles anyway. Romney resisted the opportunity to do this. Instead, he made vague claims about how he’d manage things better, and how we need to reduce the size of government.

    How much? He never said. My guess was about 10 percent. In other words, useless.

    No principles, no ability to sell the movement. That’s why he lost.

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