Rove: Limit Media’s Ability to Define Our Candidates in Primary Debates

Karl Rove autopsies the 2012 election loss in a Wall Street Journal column today. It’s well worth a read, but this is the part I found most interesting:

The GOP must reduce the destructiveness of the presidential primaries. In the first place, activists can withhold support from candidates who make reckless assaults on competitors, which happened too often this time. Also, the Republican National Committee should limit the number of debates and, by showing wisdom in picking debate moderators, limit the media’s ability to depict the party as a fringe group.

Gee, ya’ think?

What was the first clue, when George Stephanopoulos brilliantly worked with the Obama campaign to set up the whole War on Women thing with an out-of-left field question asking if we would ban contraception?

I’m not picking on Rove, but this was a glaringly obvious thing for the GOP to do years ago, not weeks ago.

We also need to get tougher when it comes to negotiating moderators for the actual presidential debates.

During the 2008 primary, the Democrats made the brilliant decision to not hold any debates with Fox News. You can can light into that calculation and declare it cowardice, but tactically it was genius.

We desperately need to get smarter with this stuff, and this includes my Tea Party, which just as stupidly got into bed with CNN for one of these primary debates.

Incompetence is a much bigger GOP foe than demographics.