GOP strategist Karl Rove, who engineered much of the success of the Bush administration, has emerged as a sort of anti-Nate Silver in the days following the election.
Karl Rove was not too long ago seen as a teflon political pundit, one able to spin any situation to favor his allies. And where Rove wound up getting it horribly wrong in Tuesday’s election, upstarts like Silver got it way right — without the millions and million in backing of Rove’s Super PACs.
Before the dust settled, Karl Rove drew attention as the election came to a sudden and stunning conclusion, at least from Republicans. While cries of “skewed polls” and a biased liberal media trying to discourage conservatives marked the GOP-leaning press for much of the lead up to the big showdown, the truth no longer could be denied.
The numbers had been right all along, as had Nate Silver — and Karl Rove melted down . As Fox called Ohio for Obama and the election was deemed over and done with by all major networks, Rove desperately tried to argue that Ohio was still in play and that Romney could emerge, against all data, a winner.
But no one listened, and Rove’s feverish attempts at delegitimizing math became a Wednesday-morning laughingstock. Democrats were quick to attack the GOP bigwig, but his own party is also losing respect for Karl Rove — an anonymous GOP operative described by the Washington Post as “well connected” just told the paper:
“He has lost his mojo … He has become total spin, including spinning himself.”
Another acknowledged to be not fond of Rove told the Post that while Rove ruled for a while, his methodology is dated and clearly no longer bears fruit:
“Crossroads was a failure and Rove’s core strategy of base-centric GOP politics is a failure … There are not enough white men for the Rove view to work anymore. His time is past.”
But yet another observes that until such time someone can unseat Rove in fundraising, his 2012 failures will not herald Karl Rove’s curtain call:
“Until there is someone who can supplant [Rove] with the relationships with the millionaires/billionaires, he’s got a role … He’s the preeminent personality in the party right now, and the donors (at least most of them) believe the super PACs played a vital role in keeping this close and making it not as bad as it could have been.”
Do you think the Karl Rove GOP will stand aside for a fresher vision, or do Rove’s past successes mitigate his poor showing in 2012?