Karl Rove Defends His $300 Million Disaster

Two days later, Rove started the hard work of explaining why the Democrats were simply too much for any one billionaire-funded super PAC to handle.

He offered up a litany of culprits in the Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday to blame for Obama’s win. People to blame included:

•Mother Nature: Don’t like the election result? Blame God: “Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.” Rove telegraphed this argument even before election day, but the fact remains that there’s almost no polling evidence at all for it. Obama’s swing state lead had stabilized well before the storm hit.

•Editors: “Then there was the anonymous New York Times headline writer who affixed “Let ‘Detroit Go Bankrupt’ to Mr. Romney’s November 2008 op-ed on reorganizing the auto companies, which the Obama campaign brought up again and again in the industrial Midwest. The president made it appear that Mr. Romney favored liquidation of the companies (which he did not), instead of an orderly reorganization (which he did).”

•The Hired Help: “A hotel employee with a cellphone camera taped Mr. Romney talking at a May fundraiser about the “47%” of the population that do not have any federal income-tax liability. When released in September, the video added to public doubts about Mr. Romney’s wealth and character.”

He also offered up another pair of juicy targets on Fox News the same day.

•Dirty Tricks: Rove told Fox that Obama won by “suppressing the vote.” Not by, say, imposing voting restrictions that disproportionately affect certain demographics, but by running mean ads about Bain Capital. And while Rove did the best he could (“The first group to respond to attacks on Bain was American Crossroads”) the real problem was….

•Mitt Romney: Rove said the Republican nominee ran a “valiant race,” but suggested that the failure to rebut the Bain attacks was exclusively a Romney issue. “We don’t do defense all that well,” he said. “It’s better to have the candidate [respond].”