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Way back in 2007 when Karl Rove was doing his exit interviews upon his resignation from the Bush White House he made some headlines by totally dismissing
Way back in 2007 when Karl Rove was doing his exit interviews upon his resignation from the Bush White House he made some headlines by totally dismissing Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for President. He called her candidacy “fatally flawed”.
Here’s what Karl told Rush Limbaugh on August 15, 2007
KARL ROVE: Well, I don’t want to become a prognosticator. So I’ll simply repeat what I said publicly on the record. I think she’s likely to be the nominee, and I think she’s fatally flawed. I think that it’s going to be a tough general election. It always is at the end of an eight-year run. It’s very hard, if you look back in history, for a party to win a third term for that party. It happened in 1988 when 41 succeeded Ronald Reagan. It happened in 1948, if you will, when Harry Truman who had succeeded to the job won reelection. But between 1988 you have to go back to, literally, 1908 to find a real example of somebody succeeding at the end of two terms and even then TR had inherited the office on the death of McKinley. You know, it’s rare, but it can and I think will be done, but it’s going to be a tough race, and it will be against her.
RUSH: What are her fatal flaws?
KARL ROVE: Well, you know, you’re trying to make me into a prognosticator and I want to set a high tone here, on the high road, but look, she is who she is. There is no front-runner who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has in the history of modern polling. She’s going into the general election with, depending on what poll you look at, in the high forties on the negative side, and just below that on the positive side, and there’s nobody who has ever won the presidency who started out in that kind of position.
ROVE: She enters the presidential contest with higher negatives. The only person who comes close is — she — hers are at 49. The only other candidate to come close was Al Gore with 34, I believe.
ROVE: Well, it just says people have made an opinion about her. It’s hard to change opinions once you’ve been a high profile person in the public eye, as she has, for 16 or 17 years.
To review: during the 2008 primary season Karl Rove said Hillary Clinton’s campaign was “fatally flawed” because her negatives were in the high 40’s and that she has been in the public eye SOOOO long she can’t do anything about it.
It’s funny how Karl Rove has yet to hang the same criticism on Newt Gingrich. After all, he knows his old pal Newt Gingrich has been around for even longer than Hillary. He also knows that his unfavorables are MUCH HIGHER than Hillary Clinton’s were when he called her campaign “fatally flawed”. Talking Points Memo has been keeping track of Newt’s negatives:
If You Believe Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich is Toast
TPM points out Newt’s unfavorables are at “58 in a CNN poll, 56 in a Fox News survey, and 60 in Public Policy Polling (D) data.”
Maybe Karl is waiting to call Newt Gingrich’s campaign “fatally flawed”. Maybe Karl Rove knows Newt’s campaign is “fatally flawed” but is keeping it “double-secret fatally flawed” because he knows Newt has a good shot at the nomination and his Crossroads group will have to spend $100’s of millions of dollars to get the “fatally flawed” candidate elected. Newt is gaining fast nationally on Mitt. And there’s no one knows how bad that is for Republicans than Karl Rove. If you believe Karl Rove.
