Top GOP advisor accuses Trump of ‘giving away seats’ in Congress: ‘We ended up with some knuckleheads who were endorsed’ by the ex-president
- Top GOP strategist Karl Rove blamed the ‘quality of candidates’ endorsed by Donald Trump for Democrats avoiding a ‘red tsunami’ in the 2022 midterms
- He said the former president ‘gave away seats’ by backing extremists
- Georgia runoff this week resulted in Democrats keeping a majority in the Senate
Karl Rove, a senior White House adviser during the Bush Jr. presidency, squarely put the blame on Donald Trump for the GOP not taking the Senate and falling short of the predicted ‘red tsunami’ in the 2022 midterms.
The top GOP strategist explained on the Cats Roundtable radio show that Republican voters didn’t vote a straight red ticket because there were candidates endorsed by Trump for which they couldn’t in good conscience cast their ballot.
‘We had a lot of candidates, who, at the end of the day, Republicans… couldn’t vote for,’ Rove told host John Catsimatidis.
‘The reason was we ended up with some knuckleheads who were endorsed by President Trump without proper vetting,’ he continued.
Rove, who was former President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, listed some examples of candidates that Trump endorsed who he deemed unelectable.
‘Quality of candidates matters,’ Rove insisted.
Top GOP strategist Karl Rove blamed ‘ticket-splitting’ and the ‘quality of candidates’ endorsed by Donald Trump for Democrats avoiding a ‘red tsunami’ in the 2022 midterms
‘What we saw in this election was the return of the ticket-splitters,’ he continued. ‘It was a bunch of Republicans who said, ‘I can’t bring myself to [vote for] somebody who is subpar or unqualified for office.’
Trump has taken the stance of endorsing candidates that push his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. This has led the former president to put his backing behind some radical candidates that beat out more mainstream Republicans in the primary elections, but had little to no chance of winning against the Democratic challenger.
One of the most notable losses was the Senate race in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Mehmet Oz, who was endorsed by Trump, lost to Democrat John Fetterman. Many experts believe that if former hedge fund CEO David McCormick was the Republican nominee, he could have easily fended off Fetterman.
The Pennsylvania loss was one of the races that led to Democrats increasing their razor-thin majority in the Senate from 50-50 to 51-50.
Trump backed candidates that supported his 2020 election fraud claims, which led to losses in areas that otherwise may have gone red in the 2022 midterms. Pictured: Trump with Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, who lost the general election to Democrat John Fetterman
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also told Cats Roundtable host John Catsimatidis this weekend that ‘ticket-splitting’ was a major factor in the GOP’s lack of a ‘red wave’.
She also deflected blame from the RNC for more radical far-right candidates winning the 2022 midterm primaries.
‘We didn’t win as much as we wanted to win,’ she said when assessing the midterm elections.
‘We’ve got to look at what happened in every state, what happened in every race,’ she added./ ‘We saw very high Republican turnout. But we saw a massive amount of ticket splitting, where a Republican would win statewide…but the other Republican running statewide… the Republicans actually voted for the Democrat. We’ve got to figure out what that is.’
‘The RNC, we don’t pick the candidates. The voters do,’ McDaniel went on. ‘We don’t do the messaging. That’s up to the campaigns.’
‘But we do do turnout. The one thing we’re seeing right now is that turnout was sky high, but Republicans didn’t vote for every Republican candidate.’