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ELECTION 2014

Karl Rove Takes on the Tea Party with 'No More Akins' Group

High-profile conservatives are outraged

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by Mary Noble

Senior Editor t

Image: AP

Karl Rove has launched a new SuperPAC designed to ensure that the "wrong candidates" do not get selected to run as Republicans.

Although Rove's group is called "The Conservative Victory Project," it's already outraged high-profile conservatives because it seems openly aimed at defeating Tea Party candidates. Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, rebranded it the "Conservative Defeat Project."

"Any candidate who gets this group's support should be targeted for destruction by the conservative movement," writes RedState's Erick Erickson.

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

The group "will start by intensely vetting prospective contenders for Congressional races to try to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections," according to the NYTimes's Jeff Zeleny. That makes it sound as though the SuperPAC is aimed simply at avoiding future disasters in the mold of Todd "legitimate rape" Akin, but many commentators, conservatives among them, see the group as a wholesale attack on grassroots conservatism.

Via the New York Times.
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  • u
    RobertJHarsh
    !
    Falls under "good idea"...bad implementer. While I agree the Tea Party and Xitian Fundies need to be ejected from the party, Rove is not the man to do it since he is part of group #3 than needs to leave...NEOCONS. If Rove is a conservative then I am a Chinaman.
  • frigginhell
    !
    I didn't vote because no option was there for me I fully supported. Like you I thought "Good Idea" but my reasoning was "Good Idea watch them eat their own and laugh as they both die as a result".
  • Fitz
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    The federal government got bigger during the 6 years that the Republicans held all 3 branches. Republican Party is all talk and no walk. it is up to the Libertarians to put a stop to the growing cancer of the federal government that is killing this nation.
  • Russell797
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    What is killing the country is a misguided belief that capitalism can forge economic growth indefinitely. The cost of government grows just like everything else, and without that growth failure is assured. Yet growth can not continue forever unimpeded. Growth always comes at expense to something else. We ignore the real problem while trying to lay blame on people running the show, if only the correct people and the correct strategy were in place with our favored ideology. Either we find a way, an economic model which incorporates a balanced, sustainable approach or we will fail.
  • jessejaymes
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    We have the Tea Party people who have no idea of the how to run a government. We have the institutionalized GOP and Dems who know only one thing and that is SPEND. Amazingly enough, considering the social divide between GOP and Dems, the end result seems to always be that their financial backers always take the majority profit from every piece of legislation. the Tea party is a bunch of old fogies who think "small govt" is achievable without cutting the Military and since most of on Social Security/Medicare. It's not. Spending on Defense at current levels will not allow for closing deficit. Can't be done. There is no light at the end of tunnel except for the oncoming train.
  • Neo_NtheMatrix
    !
    You don't like anybody, you demonize every group, every politician and every political ideology. I guess it's easiest to step back when something fails and say you have never supported it to begin with. The problem is, you have to support something sometime.

    Does the Tea Party represent a perfect group of people? No. No, they don't. What the Tea Party does represent is a group of people that passionately love their country, and are willing to work as hard it takes to save her. What other group of people do you know of who are as dedicated to love of country as the Tea Party?

    Next time you step to us trying to diminish us and what we represent, think about who actually does anything to advance this country besides us. Government represents failure. It should only exist where it is absolutely mandatory. And even then, it should only exist to the extent absolutely necessary to get the job done -- no more, no less.
  • jessejaymes
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    @Neo_NtheMatrix You know who I come closest to supporting? the "occupy" people. THAT is the issue that matters most to me. The ultra rich are taking EVERYTHING. You say "the tea party is not perfect" and YET you constantly berate the Occupy people when IN FACT their goals of controlling govt is not that dissimilar to those of the Tea Party. My problem with the Tea Party is not fiscal. It's the blatant racism, the religious involvement and the unwillingness to put social issues aside and focus on the financial aspect of govt which I find to be the most important. And the next time you decide to label Occupy by a few idiots raping in the park or something similar YOU remember your own words.
  • Zazziness
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    @Neo_NtheMatrix I'd be convinced the Tea Party loved the USA if so many of them didn't want to get rid of our Constitution and replace it with their version of the Bible.
  • u
    ASISEEIT2
    !
    @Neo_NtheMatrix I agree with your reply. The republian party falls way short in representing most of those who vote republican. Who the republican party represents is now in question but who the party selected as the parties choices to run for president in the last two presidential elections, moderate/ Liberals like John McCain or another moderate/ Liberal, Mitt Romney pretty well removed any doubt that the establishment elite of the republican party controls the party. The elte were responsible for the republicans losing the last two elections. The Tea Party didn't cause the republicans to lose those last two presidential elections but a party elite who refused to recognize that voters could have voted for the liberal democrat party if they believed in the democrats liberal, leftist policies. The voters didn't need to vote for a republican party that was a party that were attempting to claim that, we're liberals too, vote for us, when the democrats were the real thing.If the republicans had perhaps recognized that conservatives and independent voters were looking for a party that repesented them, that believed in America's greatness as Ronald Reagan did. If the republican party had choosen such a canidate for president in Ronald Reagan's mold, might have won those voters over and won the presidency for the party.
  • jessejaymes
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    Rove and his ilk are institutionalized corruption. They don't really care about social issue and only use them to keep the base diverted and riled up against the Dems. But make no mistake, the Karl Rove segment of the GOP is far more dangerous than the Tea Baggers. Baggers are mostly out of touch seniors. Rove and his kind are the sharks that are determined to turn America into a third world country of the ultra rich and the rabble. No middle class.
  • Tralee
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    He's right, we can't just run a person because they are Tea Party, look at some of the clunkers we got who didn't stand a chance to win! We want to WIN, not make some ideological point. Akins was a clunker! The position was ours to lose and lose we did because Akins made a stupid comment. Tea Party is a part of the Republican Party and many of their candidates worked out well, but just enough tanked this time to lose our advantage we had in winning the Senate. Marco Rubio was a great call and will be an asset, Akins was a bad call and we lost.
  • PNWest
    !
    The Tea Party is the base of today's GOP. Karl 'Turdblossom' Rove is yesterday's news. If the Tea Party wins - the GOP loses. If Turdblossom and company wins - the GOP loses. Face it - the GOP is dying out. Good riddance.
  • LGRepublican
    !
    This smells of a pathetic attempt to try and staying relevant. Akins was a bad, bad choice but that doesn't mean the GOP should completely ignore the Tea Party. The most amusing part of this whole thing is this is group is the brainchild of a NEOCON.....
  • DARSB
    !
    When you've shown you haven't got what it takes to attract less-than-crazy voters, as Mr Rove did in this most recent setback, and you blew a third of a billion of others people's dollars in the process, you have to find some way to convince donors you have some practical value. 2014 will be another acid test for Mr Rove.
  • Tralee
    !
    Karl Rove had nothing to do with getting Mr. Akins to run, he and many other conservatives had a great deal to do with trying to get him to quit, defunding him and in general trying to get a more qualified candidate to run in his place. BUT - the people of his state took umbrage, were miffed that "their will" was being nullified, so they got what they wished for, a failed candidate ran and lost. Their problem, not ours. You continued vilification of all and sundry who just happen to be conservative is getting really tiresome and old. At least if you must continue in this vein, get some facts first.
  • DARSB
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    @Tralee My comment had nothing to do with the failed Akins candidacy and everything to do with the failed Rove SuperPAC.
  • Tralee
    !
    What bothers me more than Rove and the Tea Party dust up, is that we have these topics here and it's just come to my attention that our "Traveling in Perpetual Campaign Mode President" has once again missed the deadline (4th year in a row) to submit a budget as required BY LAW. Yet what do we get? Karl Rove comments that make sense, Ron Paul comments that are pure Ron Paul and absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, bumpkis, about the one thing we are all wondering about, the economy. Why is that?
  • harold_lloyd
    !
    This is history in the making. The Republican party has to make a choice between ideological purity and pragmatism. You get to see that schism as it unfolds.

    Remember Goldwater Republicans?
  • Zazziness
    !
    I'd have more sympathy if it hadn't been Karl who wooed the extremists into the GOP in the first place. Now he finds he can't control them and wants them gone. Good luck.
  • u
    Ramsey
    !
    Akins was a plant for the GOP establishment to continue to place RINOS in the GOP. He intentionally refused to step down when he could have. It's time to go third Party. The Democrat Party is now Socialist/ Communist.
  • u
    Ramsey
    !
    Akins was a plant for the GOP establishment to continue to place RINOS in the GOP. He intentionally refused to step down when he could have. It's time to go third Party. The Democrat Party is now Socialist/ Communist. The Democrat party of overrun with organized crime. The Democrat Party is filled with the very liberal socialist radicals and communist-defending domestic terrorists who are being accused of all these shootings all around America. They are all involved in some of the most heinous shootings in recent times. Every time people elect Democrats to power these Democrat politicians are always involved in destroying America's constitution, Destroying America's National Security, and they collude with wealthy corrupt bankers, monopolies businesses, Drug Lords, Drug Cartels, Pedophile Millionaires and Billionaire, Communistic Hollywood Actors, and making agreement with interests of foreign terrorist states. Their own agenda appears to be foreign occupation. America as a whole is now being held hostage by our dictator in chief --- Barack Obama.
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