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Video: Karl Rove Slams Sarah Palin In Wake Of Her CPAC Attack

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” American Crossroads boss Karl Rove took a shot at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference attacked Rove for his reportedly planned involvement in upcoming Republican primaries.

“The last thing we need is Washington, D.C. vetting our candidates,” Palin told attendees at CPAC, while suggesting that Rove has a financial motivation. “The architects can head on back to the great Lone Star state and put their names on some ballot.”

But in his “Fox News Sunday” appearance, Rove said he wanted to set a few things straight.

“Well, first of all I live in Texas and not Washington,” Rove said. “Second of all, look, Sarah Palin should be agreeing with this. She didn’t support Todd Akin, and when he said the reprehensible things he said, she wisely came out and said he ought to get out of the race — the ‘legitimate rape’ candidate in Missouri. If she can play in primaries, other people can play in primaries.”

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Brent Bozell Levels Broadside Against Entire Republican Establishment

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong

For America Executive Director Brent Bozell lashed out at Republican leaders Saturday, accusing Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team of failing to push a conservative agenda.

“John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy, you said all the right things to conservatives to propel the GOP back to the majority and you to the top three leadership positions in the House. You, like virtually every single other Republican elected to Congress solemnly vowed to rid us of Obamacare, which you can do simply by refusing to fund it. Why haven’t you done so?” Bozell asked, charging that the House GOP leadership has “done nothing for over two years but give us excuses and more commitments that tomorrow, yes tomorrow, you’ll honor your promises.”

“Gentlemen, where promises are concerned, you are not what you promised to be,” he added. Indeed, virtually every major Republican on the national stage came under attack by Bozell, who is a favorite of conservative activists.

On Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Bozell said, “You ran, and won as a fiscal conservative. You leave punishing Virginia with the largest tax increase in history. I wish we’d never elected you. Do you have national aspirations? Sorry my friend, forget them.”

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Video: Trump Bashes Rove’s $400M ‘Failure’

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Donald Trump on Friday appeared to bash Karl Rove’s super PAC activity for its track record in the last election.

”When you watch someone who spends $400 million on campaigns with perhaps the worst ads I’ve ever seen — they did ads on Obama I thought were being paid for by the Obama campaign,” Trump said in his address to CPAC. Rove’s groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, spent more than $300 million on the 2012 cycle.

Trump continued, “When you spend $400 million and it’s a failure and you don’t have one victory, you know something is seriously, seriously wrong.”

The real estate mogul gave an opening address at CPAC’s Friday morning session as the conservative crowd trickled in.

Trump also cast doubt on GOP efforts concerning immigration reform.

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Chocola: Rove Only Cares About GOP ‘Brand’

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photo credit: silas216Club for Growth President Chris Chocola says Republican strategist Karl Rove is more concerned about the packaging of GOP candidates than their political philosophy, a position he believes dismisses how voters feel about a candidate’s “core beliefs.”

“What Karl Rove and some of the establishment groups care about is only the brand,” Chocola told CBS’ “Face to Face” Thursday. “They only care if someone’s a Republican or not. They don’t really care what their core beliefs are.”

Chocola, whose own limited government group just targeted nine GOP congressmen for defeat because their voting records aren’t conservative enough, was referring to Rove’s Conservative Victory Project, which plans to target conservative Republican candidates whose views may be too extreme to get them elected.

Chocola says there’s a difference between how Club for Growth measures candidates and how Rove does it.

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Tea Partyers Fight For Soul of GOP

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Photo Credit: APThough years in the brewing, the internal fight over the direction of the Republican Party has exploded onto front pages and political talk shows this month after strategist Karl Rove announced the formation of a new political action committee designed to promote more electable candidates.

Fed up with what they see as a sellout of their small-government agenda and tired of Election Day disappointments, tea partyers and many conservatives are firing back.

The outcome of the battle will define the party and how it tackles everything from foreign policy to national security and immigration on Capitol Hill, where GOP leaders and tea partyers have been butting heads over taxes and spending.

“This is a fight,” Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest branches of the grass-roots movement.

“It is a fight between the people across the country who think they know how to live their lives best and pick their own representatives, against the establishment that thinks it can decide what is best for us through laws, regulations, political consultants and a political class who thinks they should deem who are the most winnable candidates in any given election.”

Mr. Rove, who was former President George W. Bush’s chief strategist through his two presidential wins, is the father of the new Conservative Victory Project, which is designed to provide a counterbalance for influential groups such as the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks that have bucked the GOP establishment on occasion.

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Karl Rove Defends Himself Against Attacks (+video)

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Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com Karl Rove is defending his new super PAC’s intention to get involved in primaries, and criticized Bob Woodward’s assertion that he was creating a “politburo.”

“[Bob] Woodward goes on Fox News Sunday and calls me a member of the Politburo,” Rove said on Fox News’ “Hannity.” “The last time I checked the Politburo was the ruling body of the Soviet Communist party and oversaw the extermination of tens of millions of people and during the Cold War threatened the United States with nuclear annihilation and just because Woodward is a center-left journalist, he can get away with calling me a communist and nobody is bothered by this.”

Woodward was critical of Rove’s new super PAC, the Conservative Victory Project, during his Sunday appearance, arguing it was against Republican traditions.

“You’re going to set yourself up as a kind of Politburo vetting these candidates,” Woodward said. “I mean, the whole theory of Republicanism is to let the local, state or district decide.”

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Newt Blasts ‘Repugnant’ Rove Super PAC, GOP Consulting Class

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Photo Credit: BreitbartOn Wednesday, Former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich blistered Republican consultant Karl Rove, saying Rove’s new super PAC that was created to wage war against conservatives and Tea Party candidates in GOP primaries should be “repugnant” to every conservative and Republican.

Gingrich, in his weekly newsletter, writes of Rove, “no one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country” and that a “bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states” is “the opposite of the Republican tradition of freedom and grassroots small town conservatism.”

“That is the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine,” Gingrich writes.

Gingrich points out that, while Rove likes to point to Christine O’Donnell’s 2010 loss in the Delaware Senate race as a reason for creating his super PAC, Rove-backed candidates in 2012 lost “winnable senate races in Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida.”

“So in seven of the nine losing races, the Rove model has no candidate-based explanation for failure,” Gingrich writes. “Handing millions to Washington based consultants to destroy the candidates they dislike and nominate the candidates they do like is an invitation to cronyism, favoritism and corruption.”

Gingrich writes that it is “appalling how little some Republican consultants have learned from the 2012 defeat” and “even more disturbing how arrogant their plans for the future are.”

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Iowa Gov. Branstad To Rove: ‘Stay Out’

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Republican Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad told Karl Rove to keep his new super PAC, which some conservatives believe was created to wage war on them, out of Iowa’s Republican primaries.

“I basically told Karl Rove that what he was doing is counter-productive and he needs to stay out of it,” Branstad told the Associated Press last Friday. “If some outside group that has no connection to Iowa attacks somebody from Iowa, that is not smart.”

After Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, announced he would be retiring from the Senate in January, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) indicated he may be interested in pursuing the Senate seat, which has been held by a Democrat for 30 years, in 2014.

Rove’s group promptly decided to smear King a week later, indicating he would be a Republican against whom the group would try to obliterate with negative ads in a potential Iowa GOP Senate primary.

After Rove leaked the details of his super PAC to the New York Times, American Crossroads President Steven Law blistered King in the same publication, telling the Times the group was “concerned about Steve King’s Todd Akin problem” and that “all of the things he’s said are going to be hung around his neck.” These comments enraged King because they falsely implied King endorsed Akin’s views and comments about “legitimate rape,” which cost Akin Missouri’s Senate race in 2012.

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Going Rove on the Tea Party? Marco Rubio Says Former Bush Strategists’ SuperPAC is ‘Good Idea’

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Photo Credit: APSen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) gave a strong defense of GOP strategist Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project in a recent interview, arguing that the super PAC offshoot, designed to quash conservative Senate candidates who might be too extreme to win general elections, was sensible.

Speaking with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Rubio was asked if he thought Rove’s endeavor was a “good idea.”

“Yes,” Rubio responded, going on to explain that Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC had been some of his biggest supporters during his rapid rise and eventual victory in his 2010 Senate race.

Rubio also gave credit to the Tea Party supporters that backed him, saying that both Rove’s group and conservative activists “have a place in American politics.”

Rove’s new election effort has quickly highlighted rifts in the GOP’s foundation. Tea Party activists have largely regarded it as a direct affront to their broader goal of putting forth highly conservative candidates. While Rove has pointed to Senate candidates such as Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock — both of whose campaigns suffered irreversible damage after offensive comments about rape — as a justification for his project, Tea Party activists have countered, arguing that Rove’s new push would have clipped the wings of successful candidates like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rubio before they could take off.

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No More Karl Rove Candidates

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photo credit: jd_wmwmKarl Rove has declared war on grass-roots conservatives and tea partiers. Rove, who had the richest super PAC in 2012 (American Crossroads, which reportedly spent $300 million in the 2012 election cycle), has started a new fund called Conservative Victory Project to spend big bucks in the 2014 Republican primaries to defeat Republican candidates not approved by the Establishment.

Rove’s big-money spending last year, which was similarly designed to help only Establishment candidates, especially if they had defeated a real conservative in the primary, was notoriously unsuccessful. Of the 31 races in which Rove aired TV ads, Republicans won only 9, so his donors got little return on their investment.

Establishment losers included Rick Berg who lost in North Dakota and Denny Rehberg who lost in Montana, even while Romney was carrying both those states. Other Establishment losers were George Allen in Virginia, Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, Connie Mack in Florida and Heather Wilson in New Mexico.

Meanwhile, Rove was helping Harry Reid to keep control of the Senate by trying to defeat real conservatives nominated by grass-roots Republicans. Rove made nasty and hurtful remarks about conservative candidates he didn’t like.

After Missouri Republicans nominated Todd Akin in the primary, Rove told his super PAC donors that they should all apply pressure to “sink Todd Akin,” and that if Akin were “found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts.” When this malicious comment was reported by Businessweek, Rove tried to pass it off as a joke, but suggesting the murder of a congressman is not funny.

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