Karl Rove, melting down on Fox when Ohio was called for Barack Obama because, you know, Obama won.
Talk about
fading away...
American Crossroads reported raising just $6 million in the first quarter of 2014, and both of Rove's groups recently announced plans to spend $9.3 million on summer TV ads in four battleground states: Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina and Alaska.
That's a fraction of the $175 million his groups spent in the 2012 election, or the $72 million they spent in the 2010 midterm.
All that spending is
wasted money. It's been very clear that for whatever reason (changing media consumption habits, disgust at negative ads, bullshit messaging), these outside conservative groups are having little effect on actual numbers. They're just not effective.
For example, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in cheap-to-advertise Montana, Karl Rove could brag that Republican Steve Daines' 14-point advantage over Democrat John Walsh in the Senate race earlier this year had been ... whittled down to a 7-point advantage. And that's according to Rove's own polling.
Wasting $175 million in 2012 kinda put a damper on Rove's star power. So this year, conservatives are more than happy to let the Koch Brothers pick up the "pissing away money" mantle, leaving Rove to fade into obscurity. If $175M did nothing for his cause in 2012, you can imagine what these few piddling millions of ineffective tripe will do this year.
By the way, I put the video of Karl Rove's election-night Ohio-related meltdown on Fox News below the fold, in case you want to laugh and relive that feel-good moment. I just did and it was delicious!