The strategist Karl Rove and his allies last week announced the formation of Conservative Victory Project, a new “super PAC” designed to lend support to what they see as more electable candidates in Republican Senate primaries. ...538 NYT
Pretty dangerous, according to Nate Silver. It's not that Nate Silver is never wrong; it's that he's almost always right. In fact, the accuracy of his predictions can be eerie. So when Silver turns a skeptical eye on Karl Rove's latest baby -- the "super PAC" known as the Conservative Victory Project -- and predicts that it could cost the party a great deal, we can believe him. In fact, we can almost taste the Republicans' crash in 2o14 when an angry tea party + individual far right voters form an effective backlash to Rove's effort to turn the party back from it recent extremism.
[Rove's] effort makes plenty of sense on the surface. Republican primary voters nominated a series of inexperienced and extremely conservative candidates in Senate races in 2010 and 2012, often with the support of the Tea Party and other insurgent groups. It can be argued that they lost as many as a half-dozen Senate races as a result, including the contests in Delaware and Nevada in 2010 and in Missouri and Indiana last year.
But conservative groups and activists have reacted very harshly to the announcement, while some conservative candidates who are potential targets of the group, like Representative Steve King of Iowa, have already sought to raise money off the backlash to it. ...538 NYT
Karl Rove's track record over the past year has been stunningly poor. He raised an enormous amount of money for candidates in 2012. Most of them lost.
Maybe he was just in a slump. Or maybe he's becoming a serial screw-up. Maybe he'll be retiring soon to his "cottage" in Texas -- so close I can almost hear him snoring.
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After seeing this, I wonder whether the Republican party is worth worrying about?
