I just received the following press release from Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum:
Karl Rove has made himself toxic to Republicans by his incredibly offensive and dangerous statement suggesting the murder of Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri. Any candidate or network who hires Rove will now be tarnished with this most malicious remark ever made in Republican politics.
Just imagine if someone had made that statement about Barack Obama. The Secret Service would go on Red Alert and you can bet that the author of that remark would be in jail by now.
As quoted by a Businessweek reporter and now on the internet, Rove in Tampa told some 70 big donors to his Super PAC, American Crossroads, that every attendee should apply pressure to "sink Todd Akin" and force him out of the Senate race for which Missourians had nominated him. Then Rove said that if Akin were "found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts."
This stunning attack on Akin is now reported as a joke. Sorry, Karl, it isn’t funny to joke about murdering a Congressman.
Rove has disliked Akin ever since Akin was one of the principled members of the U.S. House who voted against George W. Bush’s extravagant expansion of Medicare when the vote was called at 5:53 am in November 2003. Akin is a man of principle who doesn’t cave in to political pressure, so he’s not Rove’s kind of politician.
Rove tried to excuse his obscene joke by saying he would not have said it if he had known a reporter was in the room. That makes his statement worse! Is murder the kind of secret political advice Rove gives to Republican donors and candidates who hire him?
A private phone call by Rove to Akin to sort of apologize does not erase the public offense. At the very least Rove should make a public apology. But even that can’t wipe out his gross political mistake.
Karl Rove is an embarrassment to the Republican Party. We don’t want any more of his advice in secret briefings or publicly on Fox News. Missourians don’t want politicians from other states telling us who to run for the Senate.
Rove has been calling on Todd Akin to resign, but the one who should resign because he made an embarrassing, malicious, and downright stupid remark is Karl Rove.
I saw a tweet: "Here's Reagan aide Peggy Noonan's argument for @dicklugar in the #INSen..." and I just shook my head. Peggy Noonan's Case for Dick Lugar is hardly persuasive:
The most recent polls suggest Dick Lugar, the senior U.S. senator from Indiana, first elected in 1976, is on track to lose his primary on Tuesday. I hope he doesn't for a number of reasons but one big one: the Senate needs grown-ups. The entire American government needs grown-ups, from Capitol Hill to the White House to the executive agencies. This is no time to lose one.
It's an A-team of endorsements if you want to win the moderate middle between the two parties, but they do nothing to help a candidate in a primary. In fact, I think they hurt Lugar's chances next Tuesday because each of those endorsements (excepting Daniels) come with the sort of baggage that reminds voters why they might want to vote for the guy running against Lugar--Richard Mourdock.
In Indiana, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock is blazing a trail to clear the way for future conservative grassroots (Tea Party) campaigns against entrenched interests and their proxies in the US Senate like Mourdock's primary opponent, Dick Lugar. Allysia Finley of the Wall Street Journal wrote about Mourdock's insurgent campaign earlier this week and concluded [emphasis added]:
Mr. Mourdock isn't endearing himself to the party's elders by picking a fight with Grandpa. But Republicans need fighters in the Senate, not diplomats. President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have shown no intention of negotiating in good faith with Republicans. So accomplishing tax and entitlement reform will require the GOP to win the war of public opinion. Indiana's gutsy and articulate tea partier is just the kind of guy Republicans need on the frontlines.
It's the establishment elders of the Republican apparatus in DC that have opposed Mourdock and fought instead to conserve the status quo. In winning the support of Indiana's GOP county chairmen, Richard Mourdock had taken the first step to state-wide victory. A step articulate by Phyllis Schlafly in her 1964 book: A Choice Not an Echo. I interviewed Schlafly about that book two years ago. Here she is talking about the importance of having a plan to take over the party:
Endorsements and grassroots support for a candidate are useless unless they are galvanized into the party apparatus. Utah provides two illustrative examples. In 2010 Tea Partiers were able to force Bob Bennet into a primary and ultimately elect Tea Party favorite Mike Lee. This year they've forced Orrin Hatch into a primary. Grassroots success in Utah is in part due to the unique system that state uses to select their candidates. At the state party convention, if a candidate does not receive 60% of the vote from the delegates, then they must run against the person who received the second most delegate votes in a state-wide primary. Hopefully, Dan Liljenquist will be able to unseat 36-year incumbent Orrin Hatch.
The system in Utah favors the candidates who are able to get their supporters to show up to the state convention. It also clears the field of tertiary candidates that bleed money and activists from the most credible challenger. I'd love to see that system adopted in my own state of Missouri.
In the 2010 US Senate GOP primary in Missouri, Tea Party favorite Chuck Purgason had good grassroots support; however, there were other, credible Tea Party challengers in that race. Purgason's real problem was that he was never able to overcome his money deficit. He simply couldn't afford the radio and TV airtime he needed to boost his name recognition.
Garnering a groundswell of grassroots support to transform the state party is the first step. The second step in the plan is money, lots and lots of money.
The reality is that state-wide elections are driven by name recognition. They are, sadly, popularity contests.
Unfortunately, conservative grassroots activists rarely have the money to make a difference. In 2010, when establishment conservative interests aligned with Tea Party interests, funding was readily available from establishment sources for Tea Party candidates. In 2012 that's no longer the case. Without the money to mount the air war on TV and radio, Tea Party candidates have little chance of beating their incumbent opponents.
On Wednesday evening Ed Martin (R) held a roundtable in west St. Louis county for entrepreneurs, innovators, and other business owners. Martin spoke for a few minutes about the economy and the devastating impact of President Obama's regulatory state. He then took questions from the audience.
Ed Martin, Republican candidate for US Senate in Missouri, hosted the first in a series of Obamacare Hearings in downtown St. Louis near the Arch in mid-February. Participants in the panel discussion included Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, Phyllis Schlafly, and Bill Hennessy.
Tea Party Conservative who began blogging at http://RebootCongress.NET when TARP passed. Email me: contact@RebootCongress.net. Help support my work: Donate Bitcoins
I just received the following press release from Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum:
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