Photograph by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Sen. Tim Scott speaks at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md, on March 14, 2013.

Steven Law, who leads several outside groups that help finance Republican candidates, argued today at the Conservative Political Action Conference that political parties are no longer the force they once were.

Speaking at a panel about who should pick candidates, Law said party leaders were once powerful enough to usher a chosen person to office. No longer, he said. Because of campaign-finance laws that limit contributions, he said, “there are no kingmakers in the parties in the way that there used to be.”

Enter, outside groups.

Super political action committees have more funding freedom than the parties — they can accept unlimited sums from individuals, unions and corporations and spend that money on ads attacking and helping candidates of their choice.

Law just so happens to have several such groups.

His latest, the Conservative Victory Project, will spend money in Republican primaries. Law and fellow strategist Karl Rove said they will back the most conservative candidates who can win general elections.

These outside groups “can’t pick a candidate, but it’s OK to support a candidate,” Law said.

But some leaders of the anti-tax Tea Party movement and of socially conservative groups such as Brent Bozell’s For America don’t want Law and Rove involved in primaries at all.

Bozell today said that he is sending a letter to major contributors to another Rove entity, American Crossroads, warning them not to give him more money.

“Groups like Crossroads squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in what were arguably the most inept campaign advertising efforts ever,” Bozell says in the letter.

Law said during the CPAC panel that various Republican groups should work together to find and promote quality candidates.

“We have got to pull together to stop the most serious threat to liberty that probably anyone has seen in our lifetime,” he said, referring to President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda.

One questioner at the panel epitomized the mixed feelings Republicans have about the Conservative Victory Project, saying he’d withhold judgment until he sees what kinds of candidates it supports.

“I’m either 100 percent for you or 100 percent against you,” the questioner said. “I can’t decide.”

Original post is Law at CPAC: Party Kingmaking Gone by Political Capital.

Photograph by David Goldman/AP Photo

Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush, left, talks to Sen. Orrin Hatch, on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 27, 2012.

For more than a decade, Republicans have looked to Karl Rove for the solution.

Now, a growing number see him as the problem.

Rove, 62, has put his imprimatur and donor money behind the Conservative Victory Project, formed to choose more electable Republican candidates and avoid such defeats as those of Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, two races the party was banking on winning as part of expanding its U.S. Senate caucus.

“I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states,” Gingrich wrote in a Human Events article published yesterday. “No one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country,” added Gingrich, whose 2012 bid for the Republican presidential nomination was aided by $21.5 million in donations from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his family to a friendly super-political action committee.

The fight between Rove and other Republican officials and activists is a proxy for the larger issues the party faces as its traditional apparatus wanes in campaigns dominated by independent groups and big-dollar donors.

See the full report on Rove at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Rove as Kingmaker Rejected by Republicans Seeking Better Returns by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A Tea Party protester in San Francisco, California.

Karl Rove says he isn’t at war with the Tea Party.

Then he blasts the Tea Party groups complaining about his new venture into Republican primary races.

Rove was speaking with fellow Fox News employee Sean Hannity last night to explain the Conservative Victory Project, a super-political action committee that will spend money in Republican primary races, territory that other well-funded groups including the party itself have declined to traverse.

Yet, “this is not Tea Party versus the establishment,” Rove said.

His two other groups, the super-PAC American Crossroads and nonprofit Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, are “second to none in our support of Tea Party candidates,” Rove said.

He unsheathed his weapon, a white board, and continued explaining that the Crossroads entities had spent at about $50 million on Tea Party candidates in the 2010 and 2012 elections. The names on his white board included Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul, Pennsylvania’s Sen. Pat Toomey, and 2010 Senate hopefuls Sharron Angle of Nevada and Ken Buck of Colorado.

There were no 2012 names on the white board.Rove said later in the program that his Crossroads groups had raised $320 million last year.

So why are the anti-tax Tea Party groups dissing his new venture? Rove said, in effect, it’s because their work is inferior to his own Crossroads operation.

He called those complaining about him “fundraising entities” where “most of the money gets sucked up into overhead and goes to the pockets of the person who owns the website or owns the political action committee.” By contrast, Rove said, he is a “volunteer” for Crossroads and even pays for his own expenses.

The list of organizations unhappy about the Conservative Victory Project includes: FreedomWorks, For America, the Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Teapparty.org and the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Developer Donald Trump and conservative talk radio hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin also have said Rove shouldn’t meddle in primaries. Near the end of the Hannity interview, Rove said, “I don’t want a fight.”

Original post is Rove: ‘I Don’t Want a (Tea Party) Fight’ — with Fighting Words by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Ray Lewis #52 of the Baltimore Ravens celebrates with the Vince Lombardi trophy after the Ravens won 34-31 against the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl XLVII at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Feb. 3, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Steven Law, one of the strategists with Karl Rove in the Conservative Victory Project, said this morning on Laura Ingraham’s radio show that the group is compatible with the Tea Party, adding that it would back a wide range of candidates in Republican primaries.

Ingraham shot back: “Why should you be the arbiter of all things conservative in the primary process?”

Law said reiterated that his group’s goal is to help the most electable conservative candidates win office.

Brent Bozell, leader of the group For America, a social media group that identifies its goals as promoting limited government, a strong national defense and Judeo-Christian values, complains that “these fake conservatives need to go away before they do more damage.”

Bozell, appearing later on Ingraham’s show today, said Law and Rove should “retire from politics” because their results in 2012 and earlier elections have been “disastrous.”

He called their labeling of the new group “conservative” offensive.

“It’s like Brent Bozell calling himself Ray Lewis,” he said, alluding to the retiring linebacker for the Super Bowl champion football team, the Baltimore Ravens.

Original post is Law vs. Bozell: How Ray Lewis Fits In Picture by Political Capital.