Republicans Never Saw This Coming: Sen. Kay Hagan Owns Her Support for Obamacare

Sen. Kay Hagan, D-NC

You know what’s at stake. Only six wins this fall for Republicans leaves them to rule the Senate. If that happens, House-passed bills outlawing contraception and abortion, promoting guns, and cutting food stamps even for children will be the law of the land. And those 50 votes to defund and rescind Obamacare? Done deal.

That’s why states where Democratic senators seem at risk are drowning in dollars from those who profit if Republicans are in charge. Can you blame the Koch brothers for spending millions through their front group, Americans for Prosperity, on ads to tip these races? They’ll earn back billions if their legislation — like a bill to charge people for using solar panels instead of burning the fossil fuels that are heating our planet but lining the Kochs’ pockets — passes.

Pundits, at first stunned by a Democrat not playing by the GOP rules, are realizing the brilliance of Hagan’s move.

North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) is up for re-election, could be drawing the most outside money.

Voters in North Carolina have already been bombarded with 15,000 television political advertisements thanks to the U.S. Senate race…

The cost of those ads is a whopping $6.3 million, and nearly all of them have been paid for by outside groups, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project.

Many of the ads criticize Hagan’s vote for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a strategy chosen by Republican consultant Karl Rove and the Kochs after the healthcare.gov website’s rocky launch last October. But the overall success of Obamacare’s first enrollment period leaves fewer one-issue voters who will go to the polls just to get rid of the ACA’s supporters.

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Karl Rove Creatively Imagines a Way the GOP Can Take Control of the Senate

The GOP has an outside chance of a Senate majority. To win, Republicans must also offer a compelling and substantive agenda for America’s economy, jobs, health care and fiscal situation that attract discerning independents (and the occasional disgruntled Democrats) on whom victory will depend. 2014 represents a great opportunity for Republicans: they’d better not let it get away.

— Karl Rove, whose PAC-backed candidates lost big time in the 2012 elections.

Karl Rove Was a Bigger Loser Than Mitt Romney on Election Day

1%

The return on investment (ROI) from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC in the 2012 elections, since almost every candidate for which the group ran ads lost. Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which is not required to disclose its donors, had a 13% ROI. Together, the two groups spent about $176 million, mostly on TV ads. By contrast, Priorities USA Action, a Democratic super PAC, had a 100% ROI, since it put its $67 million behind Pres. Obama. Majority PAC, which supported Democratic Senate candidates, produced a 70% ROI, and House Majority PAC, a 44% ROI.

Rove: Trump Falling into President’s Birther ‘Trap’

You know, the troubling thing in the interview tonight was he said as time has gone on here, over the last couple of weeks, he has become more interested and more believing in the issue. You know, when he first brought it up, he said ‘of course I accept that he’s a citizen. He ought to just release the, release his birth certificate.’ Different tone tonight. This is a mistake. It will marginalize him and he’s falling into Barack Obama’s trap. Barack Obama wants Republicans to fall into this trap because he knows it discredits us with the vast majority of the American people when they do.

— Karl Rove, speaking to Bill O’Reilly on Fox about Donald Trump’s newfound belief in birtherism

Rove’s Super PAC Sets $52 Million Goal

$52 million

The fundraising goal of American Crossroads, the “Super PAC” led by Karl Rove whose major donors will not be revealed, thanks to disclosure filing deadlines, until after the midterm election. American Crossroads is one of at least a dozen such rightwing groups, which solicit donations from multinational corporations under the terms of the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision.