A riddle for Karl Rove
By Comrade Misfit
Q: What do you call the candidate who gets 270 electoral votes?
A: The winner.
Rove, you may recall, formed a Super PAC, American Crossroads, and collected well north of $300 million to help the Republicans retake the White House.*
President Obama won 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. A 126-vote margin is not exactly chump-change results. Obama won the popular vote both times as well, something that Rove's candidate didn't do in 2000. Obama won more electoral votes than George W. Bush did in either of his elections. Going into the election, the only state that Romney won that was not seen as being firmly in his camp was North Carolina. But nobody really regarded North Carolina as one of the swing states this time. Obama won all of the swing states that were in play, to the point that he could have lost Ohio and Florida and still won.
I won't get into how everyone on the Republican side drank the Kool-Aid and ignored what the polling data was telling them. It is what one would expect from a party that prizes gut feelings and belief over hard numbers.
Rove's excuse for blowing close to $400 million boils down to this: It could have been worse.
How much worse? Obama shelled Romney. The Democrats, in spite of Rove's Super PAC, lost one Senate seat they held and picked up two they didn't. And Republican Super PAC spending so irritated the independent who won in Maine, Angus King, that he'll probably caucus with the majority.
In what reality does one take almost $400 million from people, deliver absolutely nothing in return, and not end up dead in the trunk of an old Crown Victoria on its way to the crusher?
____________________________________________
* Presumably he paid himself a really good salary for his efforts.
(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)
Q: What do you call the candidate who gets 270 electoral votes?
A: The winner.
Rove, you may recall, formed a Super PAC, American Crossroads, and collected well north of $300 million to help the Republicans retake the White House.*
President Obama won 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. A 126-vote margin is not exactly chump-change results. Obama won the popular vote both times as well, something that Rove's candidate didn't do in 2000. Obama won more electoral votes than George W. Bush did in either of his elections. Going into the election, the only state that Romney won that was not seen as being firmly in his camp was North Carolina. But nobody really regarded North Carolina as one of the swing states this time. Obama won all of the swing states that were in play, to the point that he could have lost Ohio and Florida and still won.
I won't get into how everyone on the Republican side drank the Kool-Aid and ignored what the polling data was telling them. It is what one would expect from a party that prizes gut feelings and belief over hard numbers.
Rove's excuse for blowing close to $400 million boils down to this: It could have been worse.
How much worse? Obama shelled Romney. The Democrats, in spite of Rove's Super PAC, lost one Senate seat they held and picked up two they didn't. And Republican Super PAC spending so irritated the independent who won in Maine, Angus King, that he'll probably caucus with the majority.
In what reality does one take almost $400 million from people, deliver absolutely nothing in return, and not end up dead in the trunk of an old Crown Victoria on its way to the crusher?
____________________________________________
* Presumably he paid himself a really good salary for his efforts.
(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)
Labels: 2008 election, 2012 election, 2012 elections, Angus King, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney, North Carolina
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
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