Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 10:25 pm
To See President Biden's 5 Best Jokes At The White House Correspondents Dinner visit The Daily.
Karl Rove released a new ad through his Crossroads GPS Super PAC, and was quickly smacked down as the Obama campaign turned America’s once most feared political operative into a punching bag.
Here is the Crossroads GPS ad:
A narrator says, “This is what President Obama said the jobless rate would be, if we passed the stimulus: 5.6%. But this is what the jobless rate actually is: 8.1%. The difference? About 3.7 million jobs. Obama’s spending drill was about $5 trillion deeper in debt and now we have fewer jobs than when he started. What Obama promised versus what he delivered.”
Obama campaign spokesman Danny Kanner responded to the ad by calling out Rove for ignoring reality, “President Obama promised to create jobs and strengthen the middle class and he has. While there’s still work to do, Karl Rove’s new ad ignores reality -businesses have created nearly 5.1 million new jobs over the past 30 months, and we’ve cut our deficit by $1 trillion, which is part of the President’s balanced plan to reduce it by more than $4 trillion. But what Mitt Romney’s promising is more huge tax cuts for multi-millionaires and billionaires that will require him to raise taxes on the middle class or explode the deficit. And independent economists have said these plans would do nothing to create jobs and could slow the recovery. The middle class just can’t afford Mitt Romney’s policies.”
When a master of dirty politics like Karl Rove is reduced to simply inventing his own statistics, things are bad. This attack ad is very un-Rovian. Where is the smear? Where’s the swiftboating? It looks like not even Karl Rove call sell Mitt Romney as a viable option, so he has been reduced to campaigning against the right’s imaginary Barack Obama.
Either Karl Rove has lost his fastball, or Mitt Romney is a lost cause.
Rove was really slumming it here, as he offered up some low grade Republican hackery.
What is really interesting is that on the eve of the first presidential debate, the Obama campaign felt very comfortable taking a bit of time to call out Rove. In fact, hitting Rove is a sly indirect way of connecting Romney to George W. Bush.
The Rove ad managed to cram four lies into four sentences. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy has added 5,080,000 private sector jobs since February 2010. More jobs have been created than lost since Obama took office. Obama signed the Budget Control Act which will cut discretionary spending to its lowest level since 1962.
Karl Rove used to be one of the most feared men in politics. Now, the Obama campaign is smacking him around with impunity.
During the Bush years, the left wanted to see nothing more than Rove end up in handcuffs. They may have never gotten that wish, but something even worse has happened to him. Karl Rove has been so diminished and damaged that he is easy fodder for the new big dog in town, Barack Obama.
Rove’s biggest problem is that he is a member of the establishment in a party where the establishment is not welcome. He thought he could use Citizens United to build a new kingdom, but not even a skyscraper full of conservative billionaire dollars can restore him to his 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue throne.
Bush’s Brain and his mountain of money could be very powerful in congressional races, but as Obama continues to lead, it seems even Rove is struggling under the heavy strain of Mitt Romney to swing voters into the Republican column.
The Obama team is firmly in control, and unlike Democrats of the past, they hold absolutely no fear of Karl Rove.
Obama has given the Democratic Party a strength and confidence that it has been missing for decades. (One of the many complaints about Bill Clinton in the 1990s was a belief by some that he put his own political fortunes ahead of the party.) What is different about Obama is that he and party leadership have worked together to build the party after the 2010 election. Obama Democrats like Tim Kaine and Elizabeth Warren are running strong in their own elections. The Democrats have a unified core and strength coming from the top that is woefully lacking in the Republican Party.
Rove may not be in chains, but he is on the verge of being a non-player in the presidential race. When it comes to the presidency, Rove is a diminished and dusty historic relic from from an era of almost incomprehensible failure.
This is Obama’s show now, and Karl Rove could be slipping from political super villain to punching bag if his party continues to flop and flail.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
