Bush-era GOP political maven Karl Rove is raining on the Republican Party’s parade. It wasn’t enough (for some Republicans) that Rove criticized over the top verbal Republican missle hurlers for hurting their party’s chances at the polls, now he’s telling his party to take a deep breath and not assume that a win in Florida means the Democrats are defeated in 2014 and beyond. Any day the talk radio political police will come and drag him out of the party:
day after Republicans captured a win in Florida’s 13th district special election, GOP strategist Karl Rove warned his party to not get too excited.
In a Wednesday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Rove stressed that Republican David Jolly’s victory over Democrat Alex Sink was about more than just Obamacare. He credited Jolly for “expanding the debate” to multiple factors, namely Sink’s record as a banking executive.
“Don’t uncork the champagne,” Rove began, warning later that Obamacare “isn’t sufficient by itself” to defeat Democrats.
Rove words arrived hours after White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obamacare was neither a “negative or a positive” in the special election race. Carney added that the 13th district seat, which opened after the death of longtime Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), had belonged to the GOP for decades.
But both sides are now doing their spin. The GOP: it’s a harbinger of things to come. Democrats: oh, it doesn’t matter all that much. But some respected pundits are now suggesting 2014 could be a Republican wave election.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.