Karl Rove’s nightmare: A one percent success rate on American Crossroads’s spending
American Crossroads spent heavily, not just on Romney, but on attack ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates in eight states — thanks to mega contributions from conservative donors like metals magnate Harold Simmons ($19.5 million), Texas homebuilder Bob Perry ($7.5 million) and Omni hotel chief Robert Rowling ($5 million.)
The super donors didn’t get much for their money. Six of the eight GOP Senate candidates that American Crossroads spent money to try to elect – Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, George Allen in Virginia, Josh Mandel in Ohio, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Denny Rehberg in Montana and Todd Akin in Missouri – lost their races, along with Romney. The group did, on the other hand, help to elect Deb Fischer in Nebraska and Dean Heller in Nevada.
Blowback
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Case studies in how to have your #$%#$% talking points in order, especially about touchy and easily bobbled issues.
“Look kids… this is what you *don’t* do”.
kim roy on November 8, 2012 at 2:05 PM
Some Obama voter just got his first shipment of free stuff, he’s a little giddy.
Alberta_Patriot on November 8, 2012 at 2:06 PM
Come on. It’s not Karl’s fault. It’s the American people. They are stupid, lazy, worthless sacks of crap. P.S. would the webmasters of this site fix all the broken stuff, most importantly the fact that the f’ing hot air logo covers up the “you must be logged on to post” thing. Sheesh
sheikh of thornton on November 8, 2012 at 2:13 PM
Blaming HA because you have the digital version of a Yugo won’t help.
Capitalist Hog on November 8, 2012 at 2:24 PM
I thought it was just me. I’ve been having to go to another post, where the login isn’t covered up, log in, and then come back to comment.
In other words, “it’s not optimal.”
pain train on November 8, 2012 at 2:24 PM
Spent too much money on ADVERTISING, instead of GOTV efforts. In 2004 Rove seemed to decide that advertising was a waste of money, and instead invested heavily in GOTV. It’s staggering that he didn’t seem to learn that lesson.
To be fair, advertising makes a difference early on, before people have gotten sick of the ads. Once you’ve defined your candidate and laid out your narrative however, advertising should take a distant second to GOTV, period.
WolvenOne on November 8, 2012 at 2:32 PM
An iPhone is a digital Yugo? Bitching may help if it inspires them to fix their creaky website. Also, please stop with the super irritating all-page townhall pop up ads.
sheikh of thornton on November 8, 2012 at 2:32 PM
Rolve and the rest of the Washington establishment saddled us with Sketchy while attacking we TEA Party Patrioits, then they snubbed conservatives and Ron Paul supporters. No wonder Romney got less votes than McLame.
BTW, Told ya so!!!
DannoJyd on November 8, 2012 at 2:58 PM
You are one of those majority conservatives on here that screech about any vote to anyone other than the latest GOP idiot is a “wasted” vote…right?
ClassicCon on November 8, 2012 at 3:04 PM
I got it, too. Mentioned it a couple of days ago on Hot Air.
What happened to all the Facebook comments?
Was going to say that was the reason Republicans lost….
albill on November 8, 2012 at 3:12 PM
if the gop keeps up the ‘free stuff’ meme….they will continue to lose…most poor people want the dignity of a job and a chance to succeed, no matter what color they are…..the gop must learn this or that are doomed even more than they already are!
Pragmatic on November 8, 2012 at 3:22 PM
if the gop keeps up the ‘free stuff’ meme….they will continue to lose…most poor people want the dignity of a job and a chance to succeed, no matter what color they are…..the gop must learn this or they are doomed even more than they already are!
Pragmatic on November 8, 2012 at 3:23 PM
Most poor people want free sh1t…end of story. Any “job” they supposedly want is anything that requires the least amount of work and most amount of benefits, in other words the “living wage” bullsh1t.
You have this childish, Hollywood notion of the saintly poor, but I have been exposed to enough of them to know the real story. See Greece.
Oh and fck the fate of the GOP…could care less. You should be more worried about what you are going to do when the riots come.
ClassicCon on November 8, 2012 at 3:43 PM
Sorry, this may once have been true, but I just don’t buy it anymore. I’ve seen too much personally over the last 5 or 10 years. Color has nothing to do with it, and it applies to lots of middle class people, not just poor people. We have turned into slacker nation. The 2012 elections were the tipping point.
I guess you are right that it would be smart to shut up about this on the national stage, but this is just HotGas and its still true.
cool breeze on November 8, 2012 at 4:19 PM
Honda’s not a troll, though I often disagree with him. He’s also quite right often. Funny how so many of these delusional idiots with their Romney Landslide fantasies were soooooooo wrong, and so many of us “trolls” were right, in general.
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:29 PM
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