Aw geez, Karl. Just shut the hell up, wouldjya?
Karl Rove (aka “Turdblossom” and “Bush’s Brain”) has figured out how President Barack Obama managed to win re-election this year: Voter suppression.
No, seriously.
GOP strategist Karl Rove went on Fox News today to argue that President Barack Obama “succeeded by suppressing the vote” — an argument that directly contradicts the conventional wisdom that Romney failed to appeal to non-white and female voters.Rove argued that Obama won with a smaller popular vote and a smaller margin of victory than in the 2008 election against Sen. John McCain. Instead of expanding voters, Rove argued, Obama “suppressed the vote” by demonizing former Gov. Mitt Romney and encouraging people not to vote.
That right there, kids, is Karl Rove redefining the term “voter suppression”. It’s a classic Republican ploy and he’s implementing it right here in front of us in plain sight. Where voter suppression is historically what we call the anti-American Republican tactic of making it harder to vote for people who don’t support you, Rove is now repurposing it to mean “making voters not like your candidate”.
It is, of course, extremely hard to take this failed man seriously. Why do I say “failed”? Because his American Crossroads Super PAC got the desired result where they spent money in exactly 1.29% of the races. The American Crossroads spin-off, Crossroads Global Policy Strategies (“Crossroads GPS”), did a bit better coming in with a return on investment of just over 14%.
In other words, as LOLGOP pointed out recently, Karl Rove has got some schplainin’ to do. And he’s going to have to do that schplainin’ to some extremely rich white people.
Have fun with that, Karl. I’ll pop the popcorn. And, by the way? They are PISSED.
Advisers to Mitt Romney insisted Wednesday that they were surprised by the scale of their loss to President Barack Obama, while big-time GOP donors griped about the campaign’s unflinching confidence in the final stretch.As results began to stream in Tuesday night, prominent Romney supporters in Boston tried to stay positive, reassuring themselves that there was still a path to the White House. But dejection quickly turned to anger a day after an Electoral College rout that shocked many who had heard self-assured projections about voter enthusiasm and turnout in private conference calls and meetings in the campaign’s final stretch.
“They ran a 20th century campaign in the 21st century,” said one Romney bundler, frustrated that the campaign made assumptions about the youth vote and voter intensity that didn’t pan out. “The anger is that they were entrusted to do certain things. It’s not like they were paid a $5,000 retainer to get a few dozen articles in an inside-the-Beltway paper. This is the major leagues.”
The ironic part about Rove’s new definition of voter suppression is that it seems to demonize attack ads that are designed to make you hate a specific candidate. It’s ironic because American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS ads were negative 92% and 89% of the time, respectively. By the looks of it, I’d say Obama didn’t win due to voter suppression. No, Mitt Romney LOST, with Karl Rove’s help, due voter suppression — voter suppression by Rove’s Super PACs.
You know, if you use Rove’s definition of the phrase.
[CC Facepalm image credit: Cesar Astudillo | Flickr]
