Karl Rove: Democrats suppressed the vote

>>> cross roads which you helped found spent $325 million and we have ended up with the same president and the same majority in the senate and in the house. was it worth it?

>> yes. if groups like crossroads were not active this race would have been over a long time ago.

>> that was karl rove an hour after the president was re-elected.

>> as we sit here today the president is re-elected and there are more democrats in the house and if i were one of those billionaires funding crossroads and those organizations i would want to talk to someone and ask where my refund is because they didn't get much for their money.

>> joining me now, robert reich and professor at the university of california . $325 million wasted. there is actually nothing on the scoreboard to show for it. karl rove says no, no it was a good thing.

>> five minutes of revenue at the cacasinos. it is a waste. and the billionaires. but what i think they did do, they tilted the playing field and made it harder for barack obama and democrats like brown and elsewhere where they flooded with money. can you imagine what the final results might have been without that money if they didn't have to worry about an extra $20 million he would have had a greater win in ohio? i think the president might have picked up an extra point or two with the negative adds like groups like karl rove ran. barack obama was able to raise a lot of money. mitt romney couldn't do that. so the playing field should have been this way but that money go it closer to even. so they came through.

>> the democrats won, they won more seats in the senate and in the house. does it matter how much their winning percentage was?

>> of course it does matter. it is going to be difficult for president obama to do much in his second term. they are going to hold pack in the house. he doesn't have a figure buster proof majority in the senate. of course it does matter. had their not been this money in the races he might have had a larger majority. the investors, they are not really donors. all of the other super packs, the republican super packs and the so calls organizations they are not going to go away. their investments were very, very small. if they had one big, their investments would have paid 500 to 1,000 times in terms of tax breaks that they would have got. they are going to come back with larger amounts of money that they are going to invest in these things. don't give up the need for finance reform. this has just begun.

>> one pioint here is that the critics of the critics and people that wrote the opinion said that money doesn't determine things and they are going to use this election to justify things. it didn't have a big impact right? so we are going to let it keep going and what the secretary said is right. but it is going to be harder now for people to make the case. next time around. the venting billionaires may be a show me perspective and the money may come in, but later in the cycle after the republicans have proven that they have done a better job with it. don't forget, the coke brothers and others have poured a lot of money into all sorts of initiative drives. the evil that this big money has done is still not clear on the radar screen.

>> there has been a lot of talk about republicans trying to suppress the vote trying to create these laws and suppress the vote. soef karl rove says ho sthey suppressed the vote. they did that by advertising against mitt romney and making people not want to vote for them.

>> bain capitol, american cross roads with an add in july. it is better to have the candidates to have the most effective response to respond to the charge and flip the argument to the narrative. these things hurt deeply. reality sometimes bites. but can i tell you it wasn't the obama campaign that began the attacks. they were calling him a vulture in the early part of this year. when the president picked up on it and people started reporting on the outsourcing, they kept ducking the issue. we started with the 47% tape. it ratified with his own words and it took them two week to say that i was wrong. car rove can justify this anyway that he likes but it was part of the campaign and mitt romney screwed it up.

>> donor is not going to have a romney chosen attorney general to make sure that he is not too curious about how he does business. thank you both for joining me tonight. kurmi ing coming up. how the one thing every newly elected senator needs to know right now is going to be in tonight's