This should be fuuuuun to watch ~ ~ Sooz

Welcoming the Conservative Victory Project to the field
By Steve Benen - Mon Feb 4, 2013 10:11 AM EST

Despite their reputation for unity, Republicans are increasingly finding deep schisms within their ranks. GOP policymakers and their allies are fighting amongst themselves on everything from immigration to gun safety, fiscal strategies to defense.

But just below the surface, perhaps the most striking disagreement relates entirely to electoral considerations.

In public, Republicans insist their biggest problem is rhetorical -- they need to identify a better way to sell their ideas to voters. In private, Republicans focus more on their primary problem -- GOP leaders are convinced that the party would be in far better shape right now were it not for rank-and-file Republican voters nominating unelectable loons in so many key races.

It's a problem the party establishment is desperate to fix. Indeed, in the wake of their 2012 defeats, Republicans have taken some steps to strengthen the party establishment and prevent fiascoes like the ones the GOP has seen in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri, and elsewhere.

But it's easier said than done. Indeed, party leaders seem to believe earlier endorsements from the GOP establishment might send unmistakable signals to the base and would-be challengers, but that misses the point -- the Republican base doesn't much care whom the establishment prefers. If the party's heavyweight players are going to make a real difference in crushing extremist clowns before they win primaries, it's going to cost a lot of money

Enter Karl Rove's operation to the rescue.


The Conservative Victory Project is the latest effort from Rove, and will exist as an appendage of sorts to the American Crossroads super PAC.

Its efforts will not go unchallenged.

Roll Call reported over the weekend that the Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), is already condemning Rove's new project.

"This is a continuation of the establishment's effort to avoid blame for their horrible performance in the 2012 elections," Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said. "They blew a ton of races up and down the ticket because they recruited moderate Republicans who didn't stand for anything. Now they want to use this new PAC to trick donors into giving them more money so they can lose more races."

Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller echoed the sentiment: "They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst. We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz."

Hoskins and Keller have a point. On the other hand, so does Rove. In fact, the great irony of this fight is that neither side of the Republican divide has any credibility at all.

Rove's American Crossroads raised breathtaking amounts of money in 2012, promising right-wing donors an impressive return on investment, and proceeded to lose nearly every race Rove targeted. Right-wing groups, meanwhile, weren't much better, and helped nominate ridiculous candidates that led to Democratic victories.

Rove and his allies argue, "Listen to us or we'll be stuck with another bunch of candidates like Akin, Mourdock, O'Donnell, and Angle." Simultaneously, the Club for Growth and its allies argue, "Listen to us or we'll be stuck with Karl Rove's 99% failure rate."

The opportunity for a round of bitter proxy fights will materialize very soon: Steve King in Iowa, Paul Broun in Georgia, and Joe Miller in Alaska are each poised to launch right-wing Senate bids, and by most measures, these candidates are so far from the mainstream they're very likely to fail -- after winning their respective primaries.

The Conservative Victory Project will likely try to take them down during their respective primaries, and even-further-right-wing groups will push in the opposite direction.

It won't be pretty, but Democrats will love every minute of it.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/04/16838280-welcoming-the-conservative-victory-project-to-the-field?lite

The Conservative Victory Project is the latest effort from Rove, and will exist as an appendage of sorts to the American Crossroads super PAC.

The appendage hath shriveled.

LMAO! ~ well, if deadbeat dad Joe Walsh is involved, what could possible go wrong? ~ ~ Sooz

Crossroads invites rivals, starts to backpedal
By Steve Benen

We learned over the weekend the Karl Rove's attack operation, American Crossroads, is launching a project called the Conservative Victory Project, intended to help discourage the Republican Party's right-wing from nominating unelectable loons who lose general-election races.

In particular, Crossroads president Steven Law noted his concerns about Iowa's 2014 Senate race. "We're concerned about Steve King's Todd Akin problem," Law said. "This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he's said are going to be hung around his neck."

Compare that to what Law told MSNBC's Chuck Todd yesterday. [Sooz comment: video is accessible via the end link]

For those who can't watch clips online, Todd noted that Steve King managed to win re-election against a credible Democrat in 2012. "Sure," Law said, after noting the money Crossroads has already invested in Tea Party candidates. "And we put $400,000 into that race, actually, in support of him this last go around."

Jed Lewison picked up on the shift: "A few days ago, Law was basically calling Steve King an unelectable nut job, saying that he was "concerned" about King because of 'King's Todd Akin problem' and the fact that 'all of the things he's said are going to be hung around his neck.' And now Law defends himself to conservatives by saying that his group actually spent $400,000 to try to elect King and refuses to repeat any of his pointed criticisms of King, instead saying he was trying to make a generic argument about how things a candidate has said or might say ought to be a factor in deciding who to support."

Quite right. Over the course of a few days, American Crossroads has gone from arguing that King is exactly the kind of candidate they're worried about to effectively saying, "Who us? We love Steve King! We gave him $400,000!"

The structural integrity of the Conservative Victory Project appears to be crumbling after less than a week.

Complicating matters, Jillian Rayfield reports that Conservative Victory Project is inspiring copy-cat organizations that will push in the opposite direction.


To be sure, it's unlikely Walsh's super PAC will become a powerhouse to rival Rove's operation. The former one-term congressman is generally seen as an over-caffeinated nut, and he will probably struggle to raise considerable amounts of money for a national operation.

But Walsh's ire for Rove and the Conservative Victory Project is the tip of a right-wing iceberg -- the apoplexy among conservative activists and organizations has been fierce -- and helps explain why Steven Law was far more circumspect yesterday than he was over the weekend.

This probably wasn't the start the Conservative Victory Project was hoping for.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/06/16869386-crossroads-invites-rivals-starts-to-backpedal

Brent Bozell fits snugly into any and every definition of "hater" ~ but there's a significant difference between a Joe Walsh being pissed off and the group of professional, very well-funded "haters" who signed the letter being pissed off ~ I think the "gang warfare" tag used below fits ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in original ~ Sooz

Enemies line up against Conservative Victory Project
By Steve Benen

Karl Rove's attack operation, American Crossroads, probably expected some pushback when it launched the Conservative Victory Project, intended to help discourage the Republican Party's right wing from nominating unelectable loons who lose general-election races. But I suspect the reaction from the far-right is far more intense than anything Rove's team imagined.

Yesterday, for example, Crossroads spokesperson Jonathan Collegio appeared on a DC-area radio show and described L. Brent Bozell, a prominent far-right activist, as a "hater."

Now, for folks below a certain age, "hater" refers to those who are frequently negative. It appears that's not quite how Bozell and his allies took it.


The letter adds that an apology from Collegio would be deemed "not acceptable." Among the signatories are Mark Levin, Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Rick Scarborough, Frank Gaffney, and Ginni Thomas (yes, that Ginni Thomas).

I should note that describing Bozell as "a beloved and critically important player in American history" is deeply silly, and I have a strong hunch that the conservatives who signed the letter know exactly what Collegio meant by the comment -- it was not accusing Bozell of being a hateful bigot. But this is actually a proxy fight.

The right is livid over Rove's group creating the Conservative Victory Project, and they're looking for opportunities to put Crossroads on the defensive. Indeed, the Collegio letter is unsubtle on this point, concluding, "You obviously mean to have a war with conservatives and the Tea Party. Let it start here."

Based on everything we've seen this week, the fight is going to get worse before it gets better.


David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United, declared yesterday, "The Civil War Has Begun." FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe added, "This is a little bit like gang warfare right now."

For its part, Rove's operation has begun reassuring rich donors that the Crossroads operation will protect contributors' anonymity. In 2012, Crossroads said it wanted to keep donors' names secret so they wouldn't face reprisals from the left. In 2013, it would appear secrecy is needed to protect Rove's rich friends from the right.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/07/16886218-enemies-line-up-against-conservative-victory-project?lite

David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United, declared yesterday, "The Civil War Has Begun." FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe added, "This is a little bit like gang warfare right now."

If there is a God, please let the TP Party win. They're pretty much unelectable - and proudly so apparently - and the last thing the world needs is another Rove/Bush/Cheney kind of administration.

Agreed.

We'll know who won if Sarah is selected to run for the Republicans next go around.

No way Sarah will ever hold public office again. She's a hollywood 'babe' now....

No matter who "wins" this internal war, we-the-people lose ~ I see the TPers as self-serving, ignorant, irresponsible, arrogant, dishonest bullies ~ and I see Rove as equally, if not more, reprehensible ~ but while I'd love this to be Rove's "swan song", the thought of TPers holding the reins of power gives me nightmares ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan
Hating Karl Rove: Not Just For Liberals Anymore
With his new Conservative Victory Project, Rove seeks to knock off Tea Party candidates in GOP primaries. Tea Party leaders are crying treason.

February 5, 2013 | The Tea Party Express, a political action committee famous for its traveling shows of right-wing agitators and entertainers, is warning its members of a terrifying new threat -- no, not Obamacare, or black helicopters, or gun-seizures. It’s something far more frightening: “We are under attack by Karl Rove,” reads the subject line of a fundraising e-mail from Tea Party Express.

That’s right: The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is lumbering through the streets of the Real America, terrorizing the denizens of Tea-Partyville.

At issue is a new political action committee formed by Rove and his associates at American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the superPAC and related group that were supposed have been the unstoppable, big-money juggernaut that would win Mitt Romney the presidency.

Having failed that, as well as having backed a bunch of losers in 2012 elections for U.S. Senate seats, Rove, for his donors’ edification, is casting a shiny object onto Tea Party turf, blaming the GOP’s failure to win more Senate races on the movement spawned by the same kind of Machiavellian resentment politics he has long stoked. So, Rove and his Crossroads colleagues have created a new repository for all those fat-cat dollars: the Conservative Victory Project.

If that name sounds kinda, sorta familiar, that’s probably due to its similarity to Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund -- a source of funding for the very Tea Party primary challengers to which Rove posits his own group as an antidote.

Rove is looking to change the subject from his own 2012 failures -- most hilarious among them Rove’s on-air refusal to believe the Fox News “Decision Desk” when it called the State of Ohio for Obama on election night -- by blaming the Tea Party for the GOP’s current troubles. Just give him more millions, Rove essentially is telling donors, and his new group will fix that pesky Tea Party problem.

But given Rove’s record, donors might do well to sit on their cash wads for a bit.

After burning through at least $173.5 million in the 2012 elections, the two groups failed miserably, not only failing to elect Romney, but also backing losers in U.S. Senate races in Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia. Of the $103.5 million spent by American Crossroads, the Sunlight Foundation reports, only 1.29 percent of those funds yielded the desired result.

Senate the Key to Republican Power

While Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, lays the GOP’s Senate defeat at the feet of Todd Akin, the Tea Party-backed Senate candidate in Missouri who claimed that women were unlikely to become pregnant as the result of a “legitimate rape,” and Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed candidate in Indiana who suggested that a pregnancy that resulted from rape was “something God intended.” But as emblematic as those rape philosophers are of a party gone mad, candidates embraced by American Crossroads failed to grace the Senate with a Sen. Tommy Thompson, Wis., a Sen. George Allen, Va., or a Sen. Josh Mandel, Ohio.

Still, the mention of Akin and Mourdock bring enough of a sense of shame to certain big-deal Republicans that the prospect of, say, Iowa Rep. Steve King as a Senate candidate in 2014 may just be enough to inspire the writing of big-deal checks to the new venture. (King is famous for comparing immigrants to dogs.)

Looking at the results of the 2012 presidential election and the composition of President Barack Obama’s winning coalition, Republican strategists know they’re unlikely to recapture the White House in 2016. (Lending credence to this assessment is a Politico report suggesting that Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential candidate, is thinking twice about running for president in 2016, and setting his sights on winning a leadership role in the House of Representatives.) Republicans’ only hope, then, at exercising enough power to implement their own agenda is in building their majority in the House, and winning a majority in the Senate, which would allow them to override the veto of a Democratic president.

In states controlled by Republicans, however, congressional districts have been redrawn in such a way that only the most right-wing candidate is likely to win, all but guaranteeing a robust, slash-and-burn Tea Party caucus in the House. If Rove and Law should succeed, then, at purging the Tea Party from the Senate, they set up a dynamic where the two chambers, even if both are dominated by the GOP, could remain at war with each other.

The Republicans’ Civil War

For progressives, there’s something delicious about the prospect of the GOP’s own civil war -- so much so that some are joining with Tea Partiers who hope to oust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., by launching a primary challenge to him. (McConnell’s a wee bit too wily to fall for that one, I think; he’s made a fast friend of Kentucky’s junior senator, Rand Paul, the Tea Party darling who won his own seat through a 2010 primary challenge to a Republican establishment candidate hand-picked by McConnell.)

The purpose of the new Conservative Victory Project, according to its founders, is to support “electable” candidates in Republican primaries, and block those deemed “unelectable”. But that leaves this problem for Rove and the Crossroads crowd: figuring out how to win a general election without the right-wing base, whose leaders are threatening to bolt.

The reaction from the right to Rove’s new venture is predictably florid. At the Conservative HQ Web site of right-wing godfather Richard Viguerie, an unsigned editorial reads:


A commenter on the site noted: “Ironic that the purpose of the Conservative Victory Project is to keep conservatives off the ballot.”

At FreedomWorks, itself riven with intrigues (the acorn falling not far from the tree), President Matt Kibbe issued a statement, saying of the new venture:


Tea Party Express honcho Sal Russo sent out a fundraising e-mail blast (apparently sent from his phone), the group’s second on the Rove project in the last two days, announcing:


(GET A BRAIN, MORANS!)

But as much as they play underdog to Rove’s deep-pocketed establishmentarians, Tea Partiers are not without their resources. The Koch brothers add more billions to their net worth every year, which they use to support a bevy of right-wing organizations, including the Tea Party-allied Americans For Prosperity, whose leadership is said to be mulling a more direct role in Republican primaries than its traditional issue-based advertising. (For the $140 million spent by AFP in the 2012 election cycle -- some of it to pay for free gas for voters it hoped to woo -- the group didn’t get much for its money.)

Then there’s the Club for Growth. A recent article by Politico’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen illustrated that group’s role in helping the most right-wing candidates in GOP primaries with infusions of cash. As an example, the reporters tell the story of Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who went on to win his primary after receiving a FedEx mailer from the Club, stuffed with $300,000 in checks, all unsolicited donations.

Of the Rovian Conservative Victory Project, Club for Growth President Chris Chocola told NewsMax, a right-wing outlet:


The names in that second list? All supported by American Crossroads.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/hating-karl-rove-not-just-liberals-anymore?paging=off

The more the Tea Partiers get power within the GOP the fewer votes they get nationally.

i think they have pretty clearly reached their high water mark.

Remains to be seen.
They can still exert considerable influence in primary races.

They can still raise funds (and hell) for their Canadian brethren who are now in government.

I'm thinking that con voters still having a choice has to be factored in ~ if the TP ever succeeds in overtaking the "establishment GOP", that choice is eliminated ~ and I don't see cons making a conscious decision to elect libs ... ever ~

Sooz