Republicans Allowed Karl Rove to Mislead Them Again

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/16/republicans-allowed-karl-rove-to-mislead-them-again.html


Republicans Allowed Karl Rove to Mislead Them Again
Nov 16, 2012 11:05 PM EST
A willing suspension of disbelief allowed the GOP faithful to see victory in all the wrong places, writes Matt Latimer.


The crime: Mitt Romney’s inexplicable defeat. The suspects: everybody in the world, except the people who really deserve it.

snip//

GOP donors and activists were fed more delusions than TV executives greenlighting the Oprah Winfrey Network. President Obama was deeply unpopular, even though no hard evidence showed that was ever true. Obamacare would dismantle the Democratic majority in the Senate, though parts of it were popular across the electorate and Republicans offered no tangible alternative. All the polls were biased and wrong, except the ones Republicans liked. The party’s message was focused on demonizing the Democrats, not putting forward controversial ideas because ideas weren’t needed. And Barack Obama was elected again.

When I worked with Rove briefly at the White House, I found him to be a smart, energetic, capable man. Maybe more than I even realized. In the past two election cycles, he and his acolytes have personally helped Barack Obama get elected and yet made millions in the process. You tell me who the dummy is—Rove or the people who keep listening to him and funding him. Come to think of it, who really deserves the blame for what’s befallen the GOP?

Nobody forced George W. Bush to make Karl Rove his all-knowing, all-powerful political adviser. Nobody forced Fox News to put him and his prognostications all across the network, often to the exclusion of all others. Nobody told billionaires to throw their money to a person someone marvelously described as a “GOP money incinerator.” Nobody told the media to make a fallible person with a dubious electoral winning streak the “genius” behind the GOP. What if the culprits we are all seeking are right before us—in the mirror?

Finally, it seems, donors and many GOP activists are waking up to the fact that there’s a world out there different from what they’ve heard about on Fox News and what they’ve been told by those in charge of the party’s machinery. The billion-dollar question is whether they will really do anything to change it. The danger of indulging delusions is that they always welcome you back.