Karl Rove’s meltdown over the battle for Ohio made for interesting television Tuesday evening, but in spite of his poor call on the election and despite the fact that Rove’s two electioneering PACs spent $170 million almost entirely on losing candidates, the former Bush adviser isn’t letting up. He’s even got a whiteboard to argue his case! (See the above clip.)
His latest? Obama won the election “by suppressing the vote,” Rove opined Thursday on Fox News, with a straight face. This doesn’t mean armed thugs turning Republicans away from the polls, mind you. According to Rove, all one needs to do to suppress the vote is run some negative ads.
“They effectively denigrated Mitt Romney’s character, business acumen, experience,” he said. Of course, by these standards every presidential candidate since Thomas Jefferson hired a writer to smear John Adams as “mentally deranged” has “suppressed the vote.” Indeed, Rove and his colleagues at Fox News and other conservative media have been “suppressing the vote” the entire time Obama has been in office. It’s amazing Obama won in 2008 after all the Republican “vote suppression” that went on that year.
Losing is tough, but Rove has tarnished what little reputation he had prior to the election by pouring away millions of dollars on losing candidates and refusing to accept reality when it’s staring him in the face. He could learn a thing or two from Mitt Romney’s gracious concession speech and try to save what little dignity he has left.
He won’t, mind you, but he should. Because as badly as the conservative media may lie to its viewers, I suspect people like Rove lie to themselves even more.
