Karl Rove Gives Lesson on How Republicans Can Overcome Trump’s Powerful Endorsement

Fox News’ Karl Rove analyzed why some Republican candidates have prevailed despite President Donald Trump’s endorsement of their opponents during a Sunday evening segment with host Trey Gowdy.

“All right, Karl, Abraham Lincoln lost, Ronald Reagan lost, and South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond and Carroll Campbell both lost. It is really hard to run the table in politics,” observed Gowdy. “You mentioned some other races. Recently in Iowa and also in Georgia, the president’s preferred candidate came in second. So there is a-, first of all, there’s no shame in losing, those four names I called are political legends. There’s no shame in losing, but something those other candidates did, they were able to overcome President Trump’s endorsement. How would you advise a candidate to try to overcome it?”

Rove replied:

Well, I’d say to them, I hope that you’re in the same situation as Iowa and Georgia where there are multiple candidates for those offices. The president’s endorsement fell short in both Iowa and in Georgia because there were multiple candidates, and his preferred candidate got 30-some-odd percent of the vote in Iowa, and in Georgia one of the candidates not endorsed by the president spent $100 million. But neither one of those candidates who beat the Trump-endorsed candidate got 50% or more in the election. It helped that the vote was distributed among multiple candidates, and they were able for a variety of different reasons in each instance to squeak by. In the case of Iowa, there’s some consideration that the Trump-endorsed candidate was not the most effective candidate in the race. And the person who beat him had one simple message, which is, “I’m following Robert Kennedy [Jr.] in the Make America Healthy Again movement.” And in a multiple candidate race, that was enough to give him the first position. And in Georgia, it was $100 million being spent by a political outsider who in many ways represented a threat to the establishment like Donald Trump did in 2016, and it was appealing. And apparently a very strong candidate and a pretty able leader in the business side as well.

In Iowa and Georgia’s recent GOP gubernatorial primaries, Zach Lahn and Rick Jackson prevailed over Randy Feenstra and Burt Jones, the president’s preferred candidates.

Watch above via Fox News.

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