Associated Press
I imagine there are some fascinating behind-the-scenes conversations taking place in the political world this morning, but the chats I'd especially like to hear are the ones between the most generous Republican donors and the party officials who didn't deliver.
Precise estimates vary, but by all accounts, Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, for example, invested tens of millions of dollars in the 2012 cycle, including writing several large checks to Rove's Crossroads attack operation. Rove effectively told Adelson and other hyper-wealthy donors, "Give me your money and I'll deliver the election results you want."
The checks came. The victories didn't.
With Republicans already in control of the House, Crossroads, Restore Our Future, and related groups seemed to think it was simply a matter of finances -- if they could raise the necessary resources, they could "carpetbomb" Democratic candidates, win the Senate, and take the White House. Democrats wouldn't know what hit them.
It wasn't a bad theory; it just failed miserably. President Obama appears to have ended up with 332 electoral votes, and the Democratic majority in the Senate got bigger, not smaller. When Rove's phone rings today, and angry billionaires want to know what kind of return on investment they received, I honestly have no idea what he can say to justify such widespread failures.
Over the summer, Rachel talked to Harvey Weinstein, and asked about Democrats getting swamped by millions from the far-right. The co-founder of Miramax Films and the co-chairman of the Weinstein Company replied:
"I'll give you an example of two movies that I distribute. I spent the exact same amount on both movies. One movie was called 'The King's Speech.' It grossed $140 million, won a few Oscars, including best picture and did sensational based on its budget.
"The other was called 'Our Idiot Brother.' We spent the same amount of money and the movie grossed $25 million. Not bad for what we paid for it -- you know, OK, a little bit of profit.
"To me, Romney is 'Our Idiot Brother' and Obama is 'The King's Speech.' You can spend all the money in the world, if you've got a bad product, it doesn't matter."
Four months later, Weinstein's quote looks even more sensible than it seemed at the time.
Rove and Adelson can buy a lot of airtime, but they can't buy an electorate that thinks like they do.
Postscript: Incidentally, maybe now would be a good time for the political establishment to reassess Rove's purported genius. He very nearly blew the 2000 race; he oversaw his party's 2006 debacle; and he was still insisting Romney had a shot fairly late last night. Maybe "The Architect" isn't the brilliant tactician he's been made out to be?
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To get rid of Citizen's United, the Supreme Court is going to have a couple of new members of the progressive variety. Then they can vote 5-4 to overturn it! Yeah!
I never watch FOX but last night I c couldn't resist and saw the Rove election revisionism in real time. I couldn't help thinking that he was trying desperately to save his ass because looking over his shoulder was a group of “1 percenters” who lost a billion dollar investment. What I realized and appreciate the discussion is over the last decade the 1 percenters and their republican political representatives have seen the public largess as funds to be disposed of in any frivolous manner without consequence. They spent trillions on tax cuts for themselves, wars of choice and outstanding liabilities without generating any economic development or a single job and in fact robbed the real economy of trillions of dollars in value. They became so comfortable emptying public sector coffers without consequent and because of Citizen United thought why not use the 1 percenters money to their own ends. Clearly the republicans are not good at finances, they spend the public largess frivolously and now their spending the private sector largess equally as frivolously. It’s idiotic to consider them as stewards of the financial system.
As I understand heads role with private sector losses of this magnitude. Rove needs to save his ass.
I have a uneasy feeling that the "Losers" of the 1% will now call in their markers on bought and paid for politicians now in office and they could still make our lives very uncomfortable.
They still have a lot of power and now, have an an ax to grind also,,,,
that's why the Rove mini-meltdown video was hilarious.
Here’s the thing…
When one is a grifter..
and one has suckered rich folks out of over 300 million dollars and you don’t
have shyt to show for it….
you’d have a mini-meltdown too.
remember, the grift can only continue if the marks believe they got something
the first time.
$320,000,000.00 and they lost 2 Senate seats. The ROI is not where the suits would like it.
Sheldon Adelson, You got just what you deserved, NOTHING. now please kiss the brownest part of my Lilly white Butt.
When Rove refers to "previous prematurely called races", I have to think he's talking about Florida in 2000. How blithely he assumes we did not notice when the news consortium finished actually counting the votes and found that Gore won... just after 9/11.
I was flabbergasted that the money didn't work better than it did - It usually does.
But I think Romney side just crossed the Rubicon on lying (I really believe that in this election the lies were'n't even embedded in any spin near the end)
Once Ohio voters (who really track what's going on in the auto industry) figured out Mitt was really really just making stuff up, then every time they saw an ad on TV they just saw some guy lying to them.
That's how my brain works - the low information voters could be take in by spin stuff but outright lies flipped a switch.