Joe Walsh To Form Super PAC To Fight Karl Rove's Super PAC
By aaroncynic in News on Feb 7, 2013 10:30PM
Eighth District Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois)
Former U.S. Representative and Tea Party darling Joe Walsh announced this week that he would form a Super PAC to fight an initiative created by conservative propaganda architect Karl Rove to defeat the Tea Party in upcoming primary races. The Rove-backed Super PAC American Crossroads announced last weekend it would oppose the loudest and most conservative candidates like Todd Akin and Walsh, who lost elections after defeating more moderate sounding Republicans in primary elections. Raw Story reports Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the Conservative Victory Project told CNN Republicans lost seats in the last two elections because they nominated “undisciplined candidates.”
Walsh, famous for things like defending rape apologist Todd Akin’s comments on “legitimate rape” and calling out Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth in the election for talking too much about her military service, said he would start his own super PAC to “support freedom-loving conservative alternatives to Karl Rove on Fox.” NBC5 reports Walsh stated on his Facebook page, Walsh Freedom:
Karl Rove is starting a super PAC to make sure Tea Party and conservative candidates don't win Republican primaries in 2014. Hmm ... if we had listened to Karl Rove in 2010, there would be no Sen. Marco Rubio. Rove backed Charlie Crist, who was last seen raving about President Obama at the Democrat National Convention last year.
Walsh added “In fact, if we had listened to Karl Rove in 2010, there would never have been a Congressman Joe Walsh. Rove thought openly Tea Party candidates like Walsh couldn’t win.”
Other Tea Party supporters also jumped on Bush’s former advisor. According to Salon, Matt Kibbe, head of Freedomworks called the Victory Project "Orwellian," adding:
All events point to a fundamental clash between the old guard Republican establishment dictating outdated ideas from the top-down, versus a tech-savvy younger generation of activists driving their agenda from the bottom-up.
It seems though, that the uber-patriots in the Tea Party are missing the point of the Victory Project’s strategy. Nowhere are they saying that Freedom lovers like Walsh or Akin shouldn’t hold the opinions they have, or that their views on women’s rights or gay rights are incorrect. They’re merely just not marketable to a large portion of American voters. Steven Law, American Crossroads president told MSNBC “It’s not because we’re necessarily nominating candidates who are too conservative. We’re just nominating candidates who don’t have the discipline or the fundraising drive or a lot of other things that they need to be able to effectively compete against very good Democratic candidates.”