Could Rove’s new effort backfire?

Stopping the next Todd Akin could be a lot trickier than GOP elites think

BY STEVE KORNACKI

As the New York Times reported over the weekend, Karl Rove and the donors behind the American Crossroads super PAC are launching an effort to prevent any more Todd Akins and Richard Mourdocks from winning Republican nominations in key races. That news prompted immediate scorn from forces on the right that have been crucial to the success of anti-establishment candidates in GOP primaries in the past two election cycles.

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

This points to an open question about the new Rove effort, which is being called the Conservative Victory Project: What criteria will it use to determine who is and isn’t electable?

After all, as Keller notes, the right can point to high-profile instances in 2010 and 2012 in which its candidates defied the Rove crowd, won primaries anyway, went on to win general elections, and then became leading figures in the national Republican Party. There have also been instances in which the (supposedly) most electable option beat back the right in a primary and still lost the general election. Think of Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin last fall.

There were GOP primaries in 2010 and 2012 in which the electability question was easy to answer. Mike Castle would probably have won Delaware’s open Senate seat in ’10, for instance, while Christine O’Donnell never had a prayer. Mourdock at least had a fighting chance in Indiana last year, but the race would never have been on the radar if the GOP had simply stuck with incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar. And Akin’s flaws were so obvious that Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that he would emerge as her opponent. By wading into these primary contests with big bucks, a group like the Conservative Victory Project could well have prevented general election defeats for the party.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/could_roves_new_effort_backfire/