[tweetmeme]
My thoughts on the Delaware primary are over at Redstate. But I wanted to add a brief note about the views of Karl Rove, who blasted away at Christine O’Donnell before the votes were even all counted. It’s an instructive moment about how the old guard is failing to adapt to this new environment.
It’s been a rough cycle for Rove. He’s provided behind-the-scenes consulting, and in some cases public backing, for a number of losing candidates — Tiarht in Kansas, Castle in Delaware, Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas — and he’s seemed out of his depth on radio and television appearances. Rove’s disappointingly bland memoir, released earlier this year, depicts a builder who was successful more because of his ability to identify the priority of grassroots targeting than any grand political strategy. Perhaps Rove was always better at understanding how to target and motivate people from the top down, rather than understanding why they would choose to motivate themselves from the ground up.
In any case, Rove is still a voracious reader and a self-taught master of political history — so it’s puzzling why he’s having such difficulty identifying the trends of the moment. The similarly history-obsessed Newt Gingrich can still claim credit for the most prescient statement about the Tea Party era when he spoke at CPAC in February, comparing the new wave to Poland’s solidarity movement. “We stood in the streets, and looked around, and realized — there are more of us than there are of them.”
It’s just that instead of Gingrich’s “media elites” being the target, the group on the other side is the right’s own establishment. As Jonah Goldberg says this morning: “The message coming out of Delaware to everyone in the tea parties’ way, Republican and Democrat alike, is: Watch out.”
Follow Ben Domenech on Twitter.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You really have to have lost your bearings to analyze these events in this manner. How perfectly Rovian to view a prior rejection of the winning O”Donnell as merely an indication of faulty political antennae rather than a warning – regardless of the motivation – that there is simply something wrong with the candidates: Paladino, Angle, Paul, etc. So Hannity out Roves Rove in establishing that there is no degradation of character great enough to thwart endorsement of someone willing to piss on the enemy. The Rove is dead. Long live the Rove.
Is there a point in there? Because there almost seemed to be one at the start, and then it went off the rails.
I wonder who you plagarized for this article? And who will you blame for your shoddy research when it comes to light?
I think TSRE is being too clever by half or thinks he is. None of this is brain surgery. I'm an active and activist Tea partier and am for the 3 he mentions as well as Miller, Rubio, etc. This is a hostile takeover of the Rep. Party – if it fails there WILL be a viable 3rd party and it may well be the Taxpayer Party (it's starting now here in NY with Paladino).
The 2 ruling parties are both in for a rude awakening. It's not just Democrats – Republicans think they can “allow” us to do the heavy lifting and they'll waltz in and take over and continue on their merry, porking, arrogant ways. UH UH. The Tea Party movement is going to get elected some great constitutional conservatives who will then fulfill their promises to US or be out in the next cycle. They know this. Our goal is peaceful revolution and it starts this Nov.! No more entitlement of the Ruling Class, the Combine, the pigs gorging at the public trough, with both parties the same and ignoring and defying the will of We The People. We are going to get on the committees and set fire to the status quo. When good conservatives are irate at the likes of Karl Rove, all bets are off. We are one pissed off, determined and impervious movement of Americans who say the the buck stops with US now. And yes, get out of our way!
As for character and flaws specifically, someone please describe the “perfections” of Biden (the seat O'Donnell is running for), Castle, Crist, Murkowski, Lazio or Cuomo. These are all DEEPLY flawed and in some cases repugnant and incompetent people. The Tea Party candidates are outstanding by comparison.
You must log in to post a comment.