Restoring respect for individual voters and traditional American values.

Rove declares war on the Tea Party movement

Conservative Republicans, led by grassroots Tea Party activists and volunteers, have successfully challenged some incumbents in Republican primaries whose voting records and dealmaking in Washington did not reflect the party platform or the voters they were supposed to be representing.

Several prominent senior Senators and members of Congress have lost this way, and others have been challenged. If they were doing a good job in the opinion of voters, they wouldn't have lost their primaries.

The party leaders obviously don;t like being challenged, however, regardless of whether they represent their voters well or not. It's about defending their own power and influence in DC, not voter interests. Like the progressives who think they always know what is best for all of us, and think that they have the right as elected officials to impose their ideas on all of us, there are big government Republicans who need to be defeated. Rather than respond to the concerns of voters, they prefer to ignore them and focus on donors.

Now they are setting up a new PAC with major donors, inspired by Karl Rove and his Crossroads Super PAC, to help defend such "moderate" Republican incumbents against primary challenges by Tea Party conservatives. Rather than support conservative candidates, the purpuse is to prevent primary challenges.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/top-gop-donors-seek-g...

If this bothers you, let party leaders know it, and be sure that you do not support this deceptivcely named "Conservative Victory Project", which is the exact opposite of what the name suggests. It is intended to DEFEAT conservativec candidates for the US Senate in particular, which is directly contrary to our objectives for 2014. We need more conservative Senators, not more unaccountable incumbents who feel entitled to do as they please rather than stand up for conservative principles and fiscal discipline to limit government.

In effect, this is an open declaration of war by the Rove wing of the party against conservativce activists.

Rove's Crossroads initiative wasted several hundred million dollars from Republican donors on ineffective campaigns in 2012. Their track record in the election was dismal. Donors need to wake up and realize that one reason why the party lost in 2012 is because of people like Rove who refuse to listen to the base, and think tehey are smarter than all of us. Rove certainly has a lot of experience, but the party has been in decline ever since Reagan left office and the Bush family took the lead.

His media-centric strategy of concentrating on a few "swing states" and ignoring the rest of the country weakens much of the base of the party. It favors the more liberal wing of the party, and failed miserably again in 2012 as it did in 2008. They managed to win the White House in 2000 and 2004, but the party kept losing ground in Congress and in the states. It was conservative activists who turned this around in 2010 - not people like Rove, who were ready to accept defeat and start cutting deals with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi to keep growing government spending and debt from a position of weakness in 2009.

It is not the conservatives who are driving a wedge in the party. It is people like Rove, and his network of big donors, who are fighting to defend the indefensible "leaders" of the party in whom many voters have lost confidence. There is no grassroots movement to defend these incumbents. On the contrary, there is finally a movement to stand up and defend Republican principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility after all the years of big government growth under the Bush family and RINOs in Congress.

They argue that "conservatives can't win", and then work to defeat them rather than support them.

Remember, these are the same people who told us that Romney was the solution, and worked to trash all of the conservative Republican challengers in the 2012 primaries.

Do not support Crossroads or this new "Conservative Victory Project", which is deceptively named.

Expose and fight against it. Make sure that your conservative Republican friends and donors realize that Rove is the one who is driving a wedge between supporters of the party. He has now shown his commitment to defeat Tea Party conservatives. We didn't pick this fight. He did. We won't back down.

He may have many rich donors on his side, but we will work hard to defeat weak Republicans in primaries whether they like it or not. The voters have the right to choose who will best represent them, and that means weak Republicans should be challenged. The fact that some of Rove's old friends in the Senate and House got defeated should be a wake-up message to him that he is on the wrong side of this fight. Instead, he is standing firmly with the "good old boy" incumbents to defend them, as though retaining their dwindling and ineffective "power" in Washington is more important than standing up for our principles. If their voters feel that these incumbents are representing them well, then they should not fear challenges. On the contrary, it should make them stronger and more responsive to the voters they represent.

These are the same people who led the Republican party to defeat in 2008 and 2012 after eroding the base of the party ever since Reagan. Regardless of good intentions, they are destroying support for the party. If they insist on turning the 2014 primaries into a war for the future direction of the Republican party, that was their choice, not ours. We will be firmly on the side of voters in this fight, not the DC establishment..

Tags: Republican, conservatives, pac, rove

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 3, 2013 at 1:15pm: Here is a Breitbart column on the Rove initiative

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/03/Rove-declares-wa...

The Senate Conservatives Fund also attacked it.

http://www.senateconservatives.com/site/post/1859/establishment-for...

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 4, 2013 at 4:18am: Red State also commented on the Conservative Victory Project

http://www.redstate.com/2013/02/04/thank-god-for-american-crossroad...

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 9, 2013 at 12:34am: Ouch. Reagan biographyer Craig Shirley calls out Rove after his O'Reilly appearance.. Two page article - don't miss page 2..

http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/nuclear-war-over-roves-claims-to-wo...

Rove keeps digging the hole deeper. Amazing. Especially when this all started with his allegatoin that conservative candidates have been too undisciplined about their media communications.

It's like the "Et tu?" moment in Julus Caesar. The long knives are still coming out.

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 9, 2013 at 1:15am: Breitbart is still covering this story after a week of attempts by Rove to defend what he is doing.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/08/Tea-party-groups...

It's still ironic that it started with Rove asserting that conservaitve candidates were blowing elections by poor message discipline. Rove keeps increasing the blowback by his defensive comments.

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 9, 2013 at 1:25am: Reagan alumni remember who supported Reagan, and who opposed him Calling Rove out.

http://spectator.org/blog/2013/02/08/rove-not-listed-in-reagan-alum

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 9, 2013 at 1:40am: Rove on O'Reilly. Epic fail at defending his latest scheme.

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html#/v/2149877775001/k...

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 9, 2013 at 2:29am: Interesting video with SE Cupp about the future of the GOP

http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=25590535&a...

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 9, 2013 at 2:17pm: Tea Party Patriots is launching a Super PAC to compete with Rove's

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/09/tea-party-counters-karl...

It is unclear how this will be used to support grassroots activism in campaigns.

It's useful to raise money nationally, and use it strategically for maximum impact, but decisions about which candidates to independently support (without coordination with their campaigns) need to be driven by local activists with effective grassroots voter organizing projects to win. Don't just waste the money on overheads and advertising campaigns.

Comment by Bruce Donnelly on February 11, 2013 at 5:57pm: Interesting post from TPP about the two front war we face to help voters take America back.

http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=378811b3c052d40a005861416&i...

It includes links to various examples of party leaders working against our interests.