Karl Rove: GOP on track to win House

Former top Bush strategist Karl Rove said Friday that Republicans are on track to take back control of the House, a reflection of the increasing optimism of top GOP officials. “I think Republicans are likely to take the House; it’s so bad for Democrats,” Rove said in an interview.

He also said the GOP was getting closer to recapturing the 10 seats necessary to win back the Senate, something few political observers thought was possible just a few months ago.

“I’ve been saying seven to eight [seats]; I’m now saying eight to nine [seats],” Rove said. Getting to 10, he said, depended on the GOP retaining all its current seats, and also picking up currently Democratic-held seats in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Dakota, Arkansas, Colorado and Illinois and winning three of four in California, Washington, Wisconsin and Nevada — left-leaning or swing states with veteran Democratic incumbents. Rove’s analysis illustrates how, just under two months before Election Day, Republicans are becoming more comfortable in predicting retaking at least one chamber of Congress in this November’s election — something many in the party had been hesitant to do earlier this year. The so-called architect was in Washington to speak to a meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, longtime GOP operative Ralph Reed’s new social conservative organization. In a half-hour speech, Rove urged the Republican activists to use the last two months of the midterms to target those voters who are “up in the air.” He also told them to go after the opposition — “use the words of our opponents to indict them” — but said the GOP needed to detail its own proposals. “We’ve got to offer a vision,” he said. But Rove used much of his address to lambaste the new health care reform law, criticizing the legislation as both expensive and ineffective. “This thing will bankrupt America if we don’t stop it,” he said. The former White House aide warned that if the country kept to its current fiscal course, “We’re going to look like Greece, only on steroids, without a European Union to bail us out.” Despite his plea for the party to lay out its own ideas, Rove offered little in the way of a Republican policy plan — and seemed to recognize as much at the end of his remarks. “I wish I spent more time talking about the positive agenda today, but I got carried away,” he said. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41986.html#ixzz0zQl7JTf3 Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41986.html#ixzz0zQl46VTs Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41986.html#ixzz0zQkoX8oV