By Rick Manning — Ever since coming out of the closet and disclosing his intent to go to war with the tea party in Republican Party primaries in a New York Times exclusive, Rove has come under attack from everyone from Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to various conservative leaders including this author.
Between Rove lieutenant Steven Law’s quotes in the New York Times declaring that he was going to try to be the arbiter of who was the most electable candidate in Republican primaries and another colleagues meltdown on a Washington, D.C. news/talk station when confronted on Rove’s plans, Karl is finding himself in the unique position of being despised on both the left and the right.
Somehow this reminds this author of an old southern saying, “The only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead skunks.” For a supposed messaging genius, one wonders how Rove managed the impossible and managed to position himself to be hated by both sides.
The good news for Mr. Rove is he did get his contract renewed by Fox News in spite of his epic fail on election eve coverage, which, by the way, is more than his triangulating buddy Dick Morris can say, who reportedly may be stuck spending time with Piers Morgan on CNN.
Anti-gunners aim at congressional Democrats in pro-gun states – miss
Speaking of not understanding messaging, anti-gun leaders are desperately airing advertisements supporting the Obama/Feinstein gun ban in places like North Dakota. The North Dakota ad attacked newly elected Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp for supporting the Second Amendment and opposing the Obama/Feinstein gun ban scheme.
Somehow I suspect that Senate Democrats David Pryor from Arkansas, Mary Landrieux from Louisiana, Paul Begich from Alaska and Tim Johnson from South Dakota have New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on speed dial begging him to come into their states with similar ads, just so they can publicly repudiate him and them. Unless this is a secret plot to help these Senators get re-elected, it is perhaps the biggest reveal of the myopia of the hard left when it comes to the real world in so-called flyover states.
Perhaps the biggest dim bulb of them all is Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns who The Hill reports argued, “Polls taken more than a month after the shootings in Newtown show public support for the assault weapons ban above 50 percent. If senators want to support that, they’re on pretty safe ground.”
Somehow I suspect that the polls in North and South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana aren’t exactly showing the same results.
U.S. House conservatives go on weekend retreat
That’s right, House conservatives are currently on a retreat to discuss the direction they ought to take. I’ve got an idea. How about moving forward by defending and fighting for the conservative values that they campaigned on, even if it means bucking House leadership?
It really is time for House conservatives to stop retreating and start charging, because failure to make and battle for the limited government case will cause a catastrophic failure at the polls either in the primary or the general election.
After all, no one wants to vote for the slightly less intrusive government party that stands for only slighty higher taxes and slightly less spending than the other guys.
If House conservatives want to know what direction they should take, perhaps they should review their campaign websites to get a clue.
Rick Manning is the Vice President of Communications and Public Policy for Americans for Limited Government.
