Karl Rove And The Definition Of Insanity

With their attacks on tea party conservatives, Karl Rove and his cohorts have fired the first salvo in the Great GOP War of 2013. The strangest aspect of this is that even as Rove denounces conservatism in favor of his unique brand of watered-down compromise, he appears to be looking to capitalize on conservatism itself.

While he may call his latest super PAC the “Conservative Victory Project,” Rove most decidedly does not wish for conservative victory. The aim of his group is to push moderate candidates while posturing as the savior of the embattled Republican Party. This is what disgraced Republicans do all the time — turn away from the base in an effort to win praise from the liberal mainstream media.

What’s that old phrase? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” If that is true, the GOP’s moderate shot-callers must be a few bricks shy of a full load.

We have tried it their way for two long, frustrating decades — and with limited success. Moderate, supposedly “electable” candidates are often anything but. Just ask President John McCain. Or Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican moderate Rove and others pushed to unseat Governor Rick Perry in 2010. (Perry won handily, and Hutchison was embarrassed into retirement.)

Let’s take a look at the most recent example of Rove and his fellow faux-conservatives’ handiwork: America was force-fed Mitt Romney, a good man who was, nonetheless, far from what Americans on the right actually wanted. Romney had many good qualities, but his soft stances on issues that would have made him appealing to conservatives cost him the election. Conservatives just couldn’t get excited about the prospect of a Romney administration. Sure, almost every registered Republican preferred Romney over Obama, but their lukewarm enthusiasm for the Massachusetts moderate did not translate into a GOP victory. Liberals voted Democrat, moderate Republicans voted Republican and some conservatives swallowed the bitter pill and voted Republican while others voted independent or not at all.

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