And I would have gotten away with if it weren’t for that pesky Superstorm!
In 2000, Karl Rove predicted George W. Bush would win 320 electoral votes. Bush won 271–if you count Florida.
In 2006, he said he had “THE math” that showed the GOP would keep the House of Representatives. They lost 30 seats and the House.
In 2008, when he wasn’t closely involved in the McCain campaign, he came out with a map just before the election that pretty much predicted the president’s landslide.
In 2012, Karl Rove has been a de facto campaign manager for the Romney campaign. He’s raised $300 million to elect Romney and Republicans and is so closely tied to their fate that he joked might be involved in Todd Akin death after the Missouri congressman blew an easy Senate pickup for the GOP with his “legitimate rape” comment.
On Tuesday, Rove predicted Romney would win at least 279 electoral votes and 51 percent of the national vote.
Then as the week went on and Mitt Romney’s lies about Jeep exporting jobs blew up all over Ohio and the president was called “outstanding” by the keynote speaker of the Republican National Convention, state polls kept showing what they’d been showing for months–the president is ahead in Ohio. And he’s coming back in Virginia and Florida, states that would give him an electoral landslide.
There’s also the fact that cell-phone only voters who support Obama are being seriously under counted in the polls.
So what’s Karl Rove to do now that his butt is on the line to $300 million worth of donors? Start making excuses.
He spoke the the Washington Post–despite the fact that he has a Wall Street Journal column and can go on Fox News seemingly at will. The man called “Bush’s Brain” told the paper that Hurricane Sandy changed the election.
“It’s the October surprise. For once, the October surprise was a real surprise,” he said.
This was after GOP insiders told Politico’s Mike Allen that Romney’s impending loss would be blamed on Hurricane Sandy, and to some degree Chris Christie.
Friday the CEO of Fox News’ parent company Rupert Murdoch tweeted this:
Thanks Bloomberg right decision.@now Christie, while thanking O, mustre- declare for Romney, or take blame for next four dire years.
— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) November 3, 2012
In Rove’s Post interview, he didn’t explicitly say that Romney would lose. But you get his drift: “…There’s a subtle disadvantage for Romney [in the wake of the hurricane]. For a five-day period, the country stopped talking about the presidential campaign really and people were talking only of the mega-storm.”
Basically, we did everything right! And we would have gotten away with it if weren’t for that pesky superstorm!
How would you be acting if you knew you were about to blow $300 million that you scammed from some of the richest people in America?
