Rove: GOP Needs "Fewer Christine O'Donnells And More Rand Pauls"

KARL ROVE: Look, let's take case of Indiana where we had a candidate, Richard Mourdock, who lost the general election in a state that was comfortably won by Mitt Romney and reelected Republicans up and down the ballot. There are two people responsible for the loss in Indiana race, one of them is Richard Mourdock, who ran an undisciplined campaign, in which he said if a woman was raped and conceived a child, it was God's will. But there is another person to blame there, too, and with all due respect, Senator Lugar had lost touch with the voters of his state. He was registered to vote in a place he hadn't own since 1973, he's last gone home for a Lincoln Day dinner in the 1980s. The top leaders of his party and his state had never met him, and he rarely went home. And there comes a point at which even accomplished statesmen like that will -- will cause the loss of an election if they don't step aside and allow a robust, normal primary to emerge.

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ROVE: I used the $30 million to prove that we were pro-Tea Party, but I think you are right. A lot of this is just simply examining these candidates, looking at their record, doing the kind of research on ourselves as the other side is already going to be doing and trying to have discussions behind the scenes among conservative groups as to how strong are these respective candidates, because look, there was a reason why Todd Akin won the primary, he won the primary because Harry Reid went in and spent $2 million attacking him as a conservative during the Republican primary. He said he never voted for a tax increase, he's always been pro-life, he's even supported a balanced budget amendment, too conservative from Missouri, and the object was nominate -- help nominate the weakest Republican candidate possible so they'd have a chance.

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ROVE: I think Rand Paul had it right. Everybody has got a chance. We believe in markets. Let people go in and participate, we should -- it's just the opposite of politburo. The more people who participate, the better off we are. The more we examine the quality of these candidates from top to bottom, the more likely we end up with fewer Christine O'Donnells and more Rand Pauls. (FOX News Sunday, February 17, 2013)

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/02/17/karl_rove_gop_needs_fewer_christine_odonnells_and_more_rand_pauls.html

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