Karl Rove claims Harry Reid is trying to pick GOP candidates

 Karl Rove has published a new article, which can be read here, in which he claims that Harry Reid and the Democrats are trying to pick GOP candidates in various races across the country in order to assure the weakest candidate wins the nomination so they can be more easily defeated in November.

  Here is part of what he wrote:

To understand how Democrats plan to hold the Senate, consider President Obama’s claim about the Affordable Care Act: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Why did he so often say something that wasn’t true?

In 2009 and early 2010, he made this false promise to pass the Affordable Care Act. It’s unlikely every congressional Democrat would have voted for it if their constituents knew the truth. And from March 2010 through November 2012, he said it to get re-elected. If voters knew what was coming, more Democrats would have lost, and perhaps even the president himself.

The lesson many Democrats seem to have taken away is that the benefits of misleading voters outweigh the downsides. At least that view seems to be guiding Democrats in the battle for the Senate, especially the work of Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate Majority PAC.

  He goes on to list a few examples of how Harry Reid’s Super PAC has put money into GOP races and how this led to weaker candidates being put forth, and he has a legitimate point. But what is his solution?

American Crossroads (a group I helped organize) replied with an ad featuring former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She explained Mr. Sullivan’s family had a home in suburban D.C. when, as a decorated Marine, he was stationed at the White House and then, after two tours in the Middle East, returned to serve as assistant secretary of state. The ad also reinforced his record as Alaska’s attorney general and Natural Resources Commissioner.

In North Carolina, Senate Majority PAC wants to keep North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis from winning 40% in the May 6 Republican primary and force him into an expensive runoff. It has unleashed a $973,000 attack on Mr. Tillis over the 2012 resignations of two of his legislative aides caught having affairs. This is more than all seven of Mr. Tillis’s GOP primary opponents are spending on ads, combined.

Left unanswered, these Democratic attacks might work. But if addressed effectively, they are unlikely to prevail. GOP candidates should ask Republican primary voters if they really want Harry Reid, smear artist extraordinaire, picking their nominees.

  What he is really advocating here is simple; GOP voters should support the establishment candidate because they have the best chance of winning, even though we all know, or believe, that these establishment candidates are part of the problem.

  Karl Rove has made it part of his mission to protect the establishment Republicans, going so far as to create the Conservative Victory Project whose goal it is to stifle the Tea Party. Here is more:

The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.

The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races.

  In the end Harry Reid and Karl Rove have one thing in common; they are both part of the establishment and as such they both want to control who the Republican voters nominate to represent the people in November.

  What Harry Reid is doing, if this is true, is nefarious in nature to say the least but what Karl Rove is doing is not much better–if it is any better. This is what happens when national money is allowed to flow into local races where the people should have the ultimate choice without being influenced by what the national parties want.

  The elections are supposed to be about what is best for the people, not what is best for the politicians in Washington and that is what is being lost here. Both Harry Reid and Karl Rove might be doing what they think is best for the people but in the end they want to be the ones who decide what is best for the people instead of letting the people have the ultimate decision. And why? Because they don’t feel as if the people can be trusted to make the right decision as often as they would like.