brain? you know what? maybe. i think the fundamental fight here is between the traditional sort of the traditional base of the republican party and then the tea party sort of far right wing folks within the republican party, and which one is going to win to become sort of the governing part of this party. i don t think this is something that can be solved within one election cycle. i don t think we re going to see, you know, the results of all this by 2014, maybe 2016. i mean, it took the democrats a very long time, many election cycles, to get to the point where it now has a two-term elected democratic president and i think the republican party is going through the same kind of things, the same kind of issue that is the democrats went through that led up to bill clinton being elected president. indeed. and we should just repeat, the amazing successful of karl rove. american crossroads achieved a success of 1%.
victory project is barely off the ground, but it seems they ve already got their first target in mind. it s iowa congressman steve king. in the words of a top aide to mr. rove, quote, we re concerned about steve king s todd akin problem. all of the things he said are going to be hung around his neck. karen, aside from the fact that mr. king refers to undocumented immigrants as lazy dogs, suggested hillary clinton s state department has ties to the muslim brother 450dhood, and that he doesn t know where the president was born, might targeting mr. king actually help mr. king in some way? it could, although here is what i think it does broadly for the republican party. it does mean whoever the ultimate nominee, republican nominee in that race is, has to figure out a way to bring all those voters back together to get enough vote to then run against a democratic opponent who won t have been so ideally beaten up during a primary. remember, it was this sort of republican on republican viole
well, look, karl rove answer the question, john. isn t that true? isn t this sort i m sorry, i thought it was a rhetorical question. look, karl rove is this is sort of classic karl rove where on the face of it, it looks like what he s doing is, as you suggest, you know, very sort of self-beneficial. he ends up being someone who benefits from this, but at the same time it s something, as i said before, it s something that the republican party needs to do. the republican party cannot afford to have steve israel run for senate and lose you mean steve king? say that again? i m sorry, steve king. steve israel, democrat yes. karl rove likes to pretend it was todd akin and richard mourdock who lost the election but wasn t it george w. bush,
establishment s hostility towards its conservative base. joining us now is jonathan capehart of the washington post and msnbc political analyst the great karen finney. jonathan, given that karl rove spent $300 million of their money and predicted a dead certain romney victory, it s hardly surprising that republicans are not happy about his latest project, is it? no, you re right. it s not surprising that they re not happy, but i would have to say that what karl rove is undertaking and whether he s the right messenger here remains to be seen but the project he s undertaking is vital for the republican party s survival. they want to continue being a national party as opposed to a regional party coming out of the south, then they re going to have to elect candidates to the house, to the senate, and ultimately to the presidency who can win national elections. well, karen, karl rove s
the monster to karl rove s dr. frankenstein who lost the election for republicans? well, he certainly did his part. i would as did karl rove. exactly. wouldn t you love to be in the meetings with donors when the donor says tell us what you ve been up to recently, karl? what races have you won? that s going ton an interesting meeting. more importantly, one of the things i find so interesting, there s an element of chickens coming home to roost because when you don t stand up against birtherism and some of the other conspiracy theories and you let these things fester within the base of your party and then candidates run on some of those sort of wacky ideas, yeah, you know what? they re probably going to lose. and so now they re having to sort of internally deal with a problem that to some degree they created by not standing up against some of it when they should have. indeed. i must get to jonathan quickly because it sounded as if his phone was ringing and his meal was about to