Political Ruminations

Karl Rove’s Many Excuses Post-Election

Well, ya know, Karl has to say something after spending somewhere around $400 million of oligarch money with zero, nadda, nothing, to show for it! Rove’s excuses (so far) via TPM:

•Mother Nature: Don’t like the election result? Blame God: “Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.” Rove telegraphed this argument even before election day, but the fact remains that there’s almost no polling evidence at all for it. Obama’s swing state lead had stabilized well before the storm hit.

•Editors: “Then there was the anonymous New York Times headline writer who affixed “Let ‘Detroit Go Bankrupt’ to Mr. Romney’s November 2008 op-ed on reorganizing the auto companies, which the Obama campaign brought up again and again in the industrial Midwest. The president made it appear that Mr. Romney favored liquidation of the companies (which he did not), instead of an orderly reorganization (which he did).”

•The Hired Help: “A hotel employee with a cellphone camera taped Mr. Romney talking at a May fundraiser about the “47%” of the population that do not have any federal income-tax liability. When released in September, the video added to public doubts about Mr. Romney’s wealth and character.”

He also offered up another pair of juicy targets on Fox News the same day.

•Dirty Tricks: Rove told Fox that Obama won by “suppressing the vote.” Not by, say, imposing voting restrictions that disproportionately affect certain demographics, but by running mean ads about Bain Capital. And while Rove did the best he could (“The first group to respond to attacks on Bain was American Crossroads”) the real problem was….

•Mitt Romney: Rove said the Republican nominee ran a “valiant race,” but suggested that the failure to rebut the Bain attacks was exclusively a Romney issue. “We don’t do defense all that well,” he said. “It’s better to have the candidate [respond].”

Karl Rove's New Anti-Obama Ad Rendered Toothless

Karl Rove’s new ad is a mish-mash of boldfaced, audacious lies and pandering to racism  utilized by Republicans in their out-of-touch effort to paint the president as a “lazy, shiftless black man” in service to the GOP’s famous ‘Southern Strategy’.

Elsewhere, Bob Cesca awesomely debunks the ad, leading up to it with a discussion of the Romney Campaign’s use of the Southern Strategy since April 2012:

In conjunction with the April roll-out of the campaign’s first major foray into the Southern Strategy, Romney said, “I must say I scratch my head at the capacity of the president to take four hours off on such a regular basis to go golfing. I would think you could kind of suck it up for four years, particularly when the American people are out of work.” He continued, “I know prior Presidents have gone to Camp David and have been able to get a little rest and get away from the demands of Washington, bring some of their key advisers there and focus on solving tough issues. I would not be jetting around the world and using four years in office to see the world, but instead I would consider the four to eight years in office as a time to get America back on track.”

Romney, who famously capped off his dismal nominating convention by cruising around on his yacht for a long weekend, spoke those words on the Bill Cunningham radio show. You might recall Cunningham from 2008 when he spoke at a McCain event and repeatedly emphasized the president’s middle name — another shameless use of Southern Strategy politics. To his credit, McCain repudiated Cunningham and never invited him back.

Elsewhere, conservatives have taken to calling the president a “vacationer-in-chief.” Even golf enthusiast John Boehner once said, “This is the biggest job in the world and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller.”

Cesca then goes on to slay the specifics of Rove’s (American Crossroads) new ad with a discussion of presidential vacations:

act: during his first 31 months in office, Rove’s former boss spent 180 days on vacation. President Obama, on the other hand, only spent 61 days on vacation in his first 31 months. By the way, it’s important to note what was happening during Bush’s first 31 months: two wars of his own choosing, a catastrophic terrorist attack, corporate scandals and a recession. Yet Bush enjoyed three times as many vacation days as the current president. According to his presidential library, Bush took a total of 1,021 days off during his eight years as president. That’s nearly as many days as JFK’s entire presidency, which lasted 1,036 days. FDR took 958 days off, but he was president for 12 years. In 2005, with three more years left in his presidency, Bush surpassed Reagan for total vacation days. Stacked end-to-end that’s nearly three years out of eight for Bush 43. Of the last seven presidents, Obama, Clinton and Carter spent the fewest days on vacation, with Clinton winning the workaholic competition.

On the intelligence briefings issue:

Now, what about this intelligence briefing issue that Rove brought up in the Crossroads commercial (also noted recently by Breitbart.com and Marc Thiessen)? Specifically, the ad repeats the notion that the president deliberately “skipped” nearly half of all the Presidential Daily Briefs (PDB). You know, because he’s so lazy and irresponsible.

Dana Milbank via Steve Benen debunked that one, “In reality, Obama didn’t ‘attend’ these meetings, because there were no meetings to attend: The oral briefings had been mostly replaced by daily exchanges in which Obama reads the materials and poses written questions and comments to intelligence officials. This is how it was done in the Clinton administration, before Bush decided he would prefer to read less. Bush’s results — Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and the failure to find Osama bin Laden — suggest this was not an obvious improvement.”

So it came down to Bush being too lazy to read stuff. Instead, Bush asked his intelligence people to read the PDBs to him. It’s frankly shocking that Rove would continue to open this can of worms knowing the ineptitude and incompetency of his former boss.

Read the full article.

Karl Rove Electoral Map Predicts Obama Win

Karl Rove released his first electoral map today, predicting an Obama win.

Sweet.

Quote of the Day: Wikileaks Boring

Dan Drezner of Foreign Policy Magazine:

“This kind of docu-dump says more about Wikileaks and Anonymous than it does about anything else.  Wikileaks thinks it's groundbreaking that Stratfor CEO George Friedman had contact with Bush administration power-broker Karl Rove in the fall of 2011.  I read the e-mail exchange, and if you think that's groundbreaking, you need to read more interesting things on the interwebs.”

Heh.

Via  Andrew Sullivan

Morning Quote: Karl Rove

“The odds are greater that there's life on Pluto than that the GOP has a brokered convention.”

- Karl Rove in a piece for the Wall Street Journal.

Via Taegan Goddard

Quote of the Day: Occupy Baltimore

“Mic Check! Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!
We are the 99%!”

- Occupy Baltimore protesters interrupt
and mic check Karl Rove’s lies about
President Obama during Rove’s speech at
Johns Hopkins University.

Adding....you GO, Occupy Baltimore!!
Image courtesy of Think Progress.

Morning Quote: Herman Cain

“There are factions that are trying to destroy me personally, as well as this campaign.”

- GOP presidential candidate, Herman Cain.  Paranoia, other candidates or Rove? I vote Rove. 

Adding........I can not even begin to  imagine this guy as the president.

Morning Quote: Rick Perry

In 1994, Karl Rove helped Rick Perry (R-TX) become the Texas agriculture commissioner. At that time, Perry compared his own intellect vs. that of Karl Rove:

“My brain is like a chicken pot pie. His is like a refrigerator that is all very organized — pickles here, salad there. ”

Gov. Perry = George W. Bush? No. Perry is dumber (however impossible that may seem), and he is far more conservative.

Were he to win the presidency, he would be nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for the people of this country.

Via Andrew Sullivan

Morning Quote: Karl Rove on Sarah Palin

Apparently, Sarah Palin has been responding to speculation of her [possible] run for the 2012 Republican nomination (could not bring myself to say her ‘run for the presidency’) in a rather foolishly belligerent manner. Karl Rove responded to her on Fox News:

“It is a sign of enormous, thin skin that if we speculate about her, she gets upset, and I suspect if we didn't speculate about her, she'd be upset and trying to find a way to get us to speculate about it... it's weird, very odd.”

Karl Rove is an Idiot

On Hannity last night, Karl Rove explained his optimism about the outcome of elections in Egypt by saying that the Egyptian people "view themselves not as simply followers of Mohammad, but these are the people who are descended from Ramses and Cleopatra. And as a result they've tended to be more western in their orientation, they've tended to be more secular.".

Watch:

Huh. Who would have thought that Ramses and Cleopatra could have such an influence on 21st century politics?

rolling eyes…..

Via TPM

VIDEO: Who is Secretly Buying Our Elections?

Chilling. And as someone else said [can't remember exactly who], this election is for all of the marbles. VOTE.

 

Silly Dumb Little People........the GOP Thinks You Don't Care Who's Funding Them

Whoops! [emphasis mine]

It has become an article of faith among certain Beltway inside-game commentators that there’s no way the Dem attack on secret money funding elections could ever have a prayer of working. Surely the issue is too esoteric, too process-y, and too removed from voter concerns about the economy to resonate.

But a new poll commissioned by MoveOn, and done by the respected non-partisan firm Survey USA, strongly suggests that the issue may indeed matter a good deal to voters after all.

The poll finds that two thirds of registered voters, or 66 percent, are aware that outside groups are behind some of the ads they’re seeing. This makes sense, since the issue has dominated the media amid the battle over the huge ad onslaught against Dems funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove’s groups.

What’s more, an overwhelming 84 percent say they have a “right to know” who’s bankrolling the ads. And crucially, the poll also found that the issue is resonant when linked to the economy. A majority, 53 percent, are less likely to think a candidate who is backed by “anonymous groups” can be trusted to “improve economic conditions” for them or their families. People don’t believe these groups are looking out for their interests.

I guess we no longer need to wonder why Karl Rove, the Chamber, and the Republican media want the Left to stop talking about their secret little fundraising pacs.

h/t Oliver Willis

VIDEO: Michele Bachmann Claims That No Foreign Money is Being Used to Fund Candidates

Joining Karl Rove in his protests, the batshit crazy Bachmann [R-MN], was on Fox Business yesterday where she was all in a fury, railing at Democrats and the White House for asking the Chamber to disclose its donors. Bachmann said that the Chamber only funds candidates out of its political action pac, and that there are no foreign donors.

Bachman:

This is about as low as it goes. It’s more than just disingenious, it’s a flat-out, patent lie. The Chamber of Commerce, who has been accused of taking foreign contributions to spend on elections, is absolutely not doing that. They have a separate political action fund and they use that only from American donors.

 

Unfortunately for Bachmann, her claim is easily proven false.

The Chamber does indeed have a political action fund. However, its PAC has so far raised $161,000 and spent only $104,000. Yet, the Chamber itself has spent more than $12 million so far this election season (and plans to spend $75 million), largely helping Republican candidates.

See, the PAC is required to disclose donors and funds; thanks to the Citizen’s United ruling, corporations are not required to disclose, nor limited as to dollar amounts of contributions.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the Chamber would have had to run its political ads out of its PAC, contributions to which are disclosed. But the Court’s decision allows large corporations — such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns without publicizing their donors. [......]

America for Sale.

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RELATED POSTS: Update: Tracking the Aftermath of the Citizen’s United Ruling

Foreign Money Funding Republican Campaign Ads Against Democrats Via the US Chamber of Commerce

For all posts on the fallout from/aftermath of, the Citizen's United ruling, click here.

FLASHBACK: George W. Bush’s Enemies List Revealed

It was enormous, it should have been illegal, and it was said to be backed up by illegal wiretaps made possible by the Patriot Act.

PEJ News, November 12, 2005:

Beyond the botched break-in of the Democrat's election HQ by Nixon's so-called "plumbers," one of the most troubling facts to come out of the subsequent 'Watergate' investigations was the existence of an "official enemies list" compiled by the administration with the aid of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Now, the Beltway broadsheet, Capitol Hill Blue is reporting the Bush administration too has an enemies list, one dwarfing Tricky Dick's, and again the FBI is implicated. 
 
According to the paper, Bush's list contains the names and incriminating details on more than 10,000 subjects deemed hostile to the administration, and even those believed critical of Bush during his tenure as governor of Texas. More worrisome than the existence of such a list is the misuse by Bush insiders of the so-called "Patriot Act" to investigate those disagreeing with administration policies.

The list includes information on members of Congress, local, state and federal officials and many media figures and ordinary citizens who have had the temerity to question Bush's reign. Some notables said to appear prominently on the list are filmmaker, Michael Moore, outspoken Senator, Barbara Boxer, and news bloggers behind the sites, Daily Kos and Wonkette.

Karl Rove can project all he wants, but to date, only two presidents were known to keep an “enemies” list, and both of them were Republicans.

Morning Quote

Former Bush political strategist, Karl Rove, on Fox News Sunday, ranting at President Obama and the DNC for shining the light on the activities of Rove in concert with the US Chamber of Commerce.

The president of the United States accused the Chamber of Commerce, and the Democratic National Committee in its new ad accuses Ed Gillespie and I of a criminal violation of our law by getting foreign money and spending it on American political campaigns, and they have not one shred of evidence to back up that baseless lie. This is a desperate and I think disturbing trend by the president of the United States to tar his political adversaries with some kind of enemies list, with being unrestrained by any facts or evidence whatsoever.

So disingenuous for Rove. But of course, there is evidence.

Sam Stein [emphasis mine]:

There is a obvious element of chutzpah when a political operative defined by his use of dirty tricks accuses his opponents of the same. [.…]

The fact remains, however, that a resolution to the debate is fairly obvious. Simply disclosing the names of who is donating to each of these institutions would clear the air and validate either Rove or the White House. But with a campaign finance law stuck in congressional limbo and hordes of potential donations at stake in this election, transparency has instead been replaced by innuendo.

Citizens United Ruling Driving Creation of Super PACS to Fund 2010 Campaign Spending

Thanks to our right wing SCOTUS, the defenders of the plutocracy, we, the American people, are getting royally screwed, and it's only going to get worse. Bloomberg:

At least 25 “super PACS,” including one linked to Karl Rove, are fueling a surge in money for this year’s elections following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down limits on corporate campaign spending.

These political action committees can take unlimited company, union and individual donations and explicitly urge voters to support or oppose candidates, unlike ordinary PACs and nonprofit groups. Like other PACs, they must register with the Federal Election Commission and disclose donors.

“They can say whatever they want politically in the advertising,” said Michael Toner, a former FEC chairman who’s among the lawyers dubbing them super PACs. “It’s very liberating.”

American Crossroads, a group advised by Rove, a top adviser to former President George W. Bush, said it has raised more than $17 million. That includes $1 million from Dixie Rice Agricultural Corp., a company led by Harold Simmons, also the chairman of Dallas-based Titanium Metals Corp. A trust controlled by Jerrold Perenchio, former chairman of New York- based Univision Communications Inc., also gave $1 million.

That may be just the beginning. American Crossroads also has an issue-advocacy group that doesn’t have to disclose donors, and it won’t say how much of the $52 million it plans to raise in this campaign will go toward that effort. Other groups aren’t even registering as PACs and will be able to spend millions on ads without disclosing their contributors as long as they steer clear of expressly advocating for or against a candidate.

I am going to repeat this daily until after the midterms.

Democrats must go to the polls and VOTE. There is no reasonable excuse to stay home this time.