While the election is over, the role of the Federal Elections Committee is as important as ever because new super PACs and politically aligned nonprofits are forming all the time, and the old ones are continuing to spend. Here’s a look at what’s been going on since Nov. 6 in America’s continual campaign.
 Karl Rove attends a ceremony to unveil the portraits of former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush, May 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) |
Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project
Karl Rove, whose super PAC American Crossroads spent nearly $105 million in 2012 — with little success to show for it — is back with a new strategy informed by those dissatisfying results. The purpose of his Conservative Victory Project is to support “better conservative candidates” for national political office, throwing blame for 2012 Congressional losses on certain Tea Party and other independent conservative candidates. “There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” Steven J. Law, president of American Crossroads, which is creating the new project, told The New York Times. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.” Rove says this isn’t a broad swipe at a particular movement. “This is not Tea Party versus establishment,” he said on Fox News. “I don’t want a fight.” However, Tea Party members, conservative commentators and some conservative members of Congress are not happy. “The newly launched Conservative Victory Project wants to push the Tea Party out and replace them with the failed strategies of 2008 and 2012,” writes the chairwoman of the activist group Tea Party Express, Amy Kremer. “If they really want to find the pathway that leads to electoral success for Republicans, they need only look to the biggest Republican victories in modern American politics. The secret ingredient to a winning formula is conservative principles.” |
