A top tea party group is taking its clash with Karl Rove to a new level, sending out a fundraising email Tuesday featuring a photoshopped image of the GOP operative in an SS uniform.
“Wipe the Smirk Off Karl Rove’s Face,” reads the subject line of the email, from Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
The email features a photo illustration in which Rove’s face is grafted onto a photo of a uniformed officer in the Reichsführer-SS, an elite rank during Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The lower left-hand corner of the photo features the inscriptions “Reichsführer-SS” and “K. Rove,” and appears to match a photo of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.
Tuesday afternoon, more than five hours after the fundraising email went out, Tea Party Patriots issued a public apology to Rove.
“We apologize to Mr. Rove,” Martin said in the statement. “While we may have strong disagreements with Mr. Rove on the future of conservatism, we want to be clear this imagery is absolutely unacceptable and are working to ensure this type of mistake doesn’t happen again.”
If a Democrat or Independent had put any of the Republicans in Nazi gear you would be able to hear the hue and cry from across the country. They would have been outraged, despite the number of “Hitler moustaches” one sees on Obama signs.
Karl Rove actually magnanimously accepted the apology and said they needed to get get back to the business of beating democrats or something to that effect.
How far will those in the tea party go to destroy the Republican party? That is the question that Americans need to be asking themselves. In some ways, the blame rests with the Republicans who were more than eager to hop aboard the tea party bandwagon, until it stopped being a winning ticket. Now many are not willing to play the purist role and realize that conservative purity does you no good if you can’t win elections. Its really all about math and percents.
It seems that the the tea party candidates run one election ahead of people finding out how screwed up their politics really are. The 2010 wave certainly didn’t carry the day last election. Why? Voters saw the truth for what it really was– a bunch of purist unrealistic hot air.
Meh…. Everyone knows, to be accurate, it should have been one of Goering’s uniforms….
Anyway….he’s been grafted onto and called nazi by the left also, so many times, its no big deal.
And yep…. the Tea Party can’t win….that Romney sure was a TP candidate. Let’s see…. the GOP before the 2010 elections were declaring the end of the GOP and laying down to die.
Who won all those races again?
Afraid this thread isn’t about what the left did to Karl Rove. That’s a school yard response…but so and so did it….
Cargo, no one said the tea party didn’t win. They won in 2010. However, everyone caught on that three corner hats, fifes and drums don;t cut it and that a bumper sticker ”stop spending soundbite wasn’t going to save the world. I sure didn’t see much out of them in the 2012 election. There were too many extremists.
One main problem with the tea party is that they were the same old people, often religious right, trying to re-brand themselves. Once everyone figured out the gimmick, it was no longer attractive.
Now seriously, do you expect big wins in 2014?
How do you think they will do in Virginia in 2013?
The Tea Party supported sixteen Senate candidates in 2012. Four won. Even Roves peculiar math grasps that. The Tea Party lost five congressional seats reducing their number from 55 to 51. 218 seats are needed to control the House. According to their website they are in the process of determining endorsements.
They’ve backed Cuccinelli. Enough said? Although Cooch is “evolving” on his stand regarding legalization or marijuana. I guess he’s chosen to pander to hippies over illegal immigaration issues.
Apparently I suffer from Roves peculiar math as well…
It wasn’t only the Tea Party that lost.
Rove needs to blame HIS failure on someone. He’s the one that was pushing Romney.
The only reason why Bush won the second term was that his opponent was terrible.
Rove is an idiot.
And I wasn’t blaming the left, just pointing out that if Rove is pictured in a Nazi uniform…it must be Tuesday. In other words….no big deal, old hat.
The picture could be connected to a rumor (since retracted) published by the Democratic Underground that Rove’s Grandfather was a Nazi. Rove was adopted.
The Tea Party and Democratic Underground……well, there’s the extremist theory in play….
I HATE that I have to defend Karl Rove, but, this is outrageous. These morons have no clue what a real Nazi is apparently. I suggest they visit the Holocaust Museum.
Elena, it looks like your BFF “Hypoocrisy” is being called by the Sheriff. Did you see those big. bold letters over there?
@Cargosquid
We know what you were doing, Cargo. We aren’t stupid.
You were saying that other people do it too….
You are doing the same thing with election losses….
The tea party types are dragging down the Republican party. I like a good moderate Republican or two in the mix. It keeps everyone honest.
I also beg to differ, Cargo, John Kerry wasn’t horrible in the eyes on many people.
286 bush
251Kerry
The popular vote was differed by about 3 million.
In 2008, the votes differed by about 10 million.
So…you are just stating your opinion as fact. It is not fact.
@Moon-howler
I mean that he was horrible as a candidate. He was a weak candidate. If Hillary had run then, she would have won. The entire field was weak. Bush was also a weak candidate.
I was saying that the left did it too. But I wasn’t decrying it. I was just saying that Rove is used to it.
I agree with Elena….use of Nazi symbology is wrong and idiotic.
You’ve got mail.
I was actually hopeful when the tea party came on the scene. At first, it appeared to be truly a grass-roots groundswell of democracy made up of people who seriously wanted to help the financial position of our country.
Now look at what it’s become. Anti-women’s rights, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, anti-government and now anti-common decency. Good luck to them EVER convincing a majority of Americans to vote for their candidate except in the ex-Confederate states.
Holy cow that is quite a list of anti’s 🙂
So your saying the ENTIRE tea party is utterly and completely against:
All Women
Immigrants of all kinds (legal and non)
The government, what ever that means
Common decency
And this one is my favorite… Planet earth
Wow! I’ve got to paint my Inlaws house this weekend, can you tell me where you got such a broad brush? It could save me a TON of time 😉
if they really want to smear Rove they’d address his sexuality. Maybe that just hasn’t ocurred to them yet. Because they’re I guess more fascinated with fascism than with homosexuality.
Maybe they have learned that gay bashing only loses votes.
u think? I doubt they have collectively learned that.
I think it’s funny.
@Rick Bentley
You’re wrong.
If they really wanted to hurt him…. they would just accept him as a new Tea Party “leader.”
The GOP would bumrush him so fast,…….
@Peterson
If the brush fits, you must convict, Peterson.
Perhaps the historical allusion the Tea Party types were grasping for, consciously or unconsciously, with this Nazi jag was the Night of the Long Knives, when Himmler’s SS (or Blackshirts) rounded up and took apart for all time Ernst Roehm’s SA (the Brownshirts). The allusion is not perfect, and I don’t regard either the Tea Party or Rove as National Socialists by any means, but, if we’re looking for historical links that would justify the Nazi sartorial exercise visited on Mr. Rove by the Tea Party, the analogy fits a teeny bit.
@Scout
Nice try. an I don’t mean that in a bad way….. but really, Rove doesn’t have the power to have a “Night of the Long Knives.” He pays too much attention to his own press.
True. The reference breaks down in the details, but I never miss a chance to summon up historical allusions, even if a bit strained. I would not have ventured out with this one had the Tea Party not dressed Karl up in that nostalgic uniform.
A major difference, of course, was that Himmler was acting on the instructions of and with full support and participation of the party leader, who was acting to ensure his continuing control. Here, we have no real leader. Everyone is free-lancing.
@Scout
You got that right. No leadership at all. And Rove is out for number one.