"Outspent 10 to 1": Karl Rove Warns GOP of Local Level Spending Deficit

Transcript

00:00and then pivot. You need to get back. What would Trump do? People want to know what these people

00:05want to do. So it's not just enough to say you have failed on cost of living or you failed on

00:10the border. But here's what we're going to do. So dismiss him and minimize him by spending less

00:15time, not more time. Problem with J.D. Vance in that in that response was fine, very artfully

00:20detailed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but way too long and missed the opportunity to go on the

00:24offense. We have 100 days. We have less than that when it comes to the number of days before people

00:30voting and the side that gets on the offense and stays on the offense is going to have the upper

00:34hand in what could be a very, very close race. Very close. Pennsylvania, I think, starts in,

00:41I don't know, 40 days, maybe a little bit less than that. Now, Carl, you know, what about the

00:47impact of all of this on some of these Senate races across the country? How are you gaming

00:53this? How are you discussing it? Well, one of the things that would concern me if I was in the

00:58high command of the Trump campaign is, is that they are being outspent at the state level by

01:03the state Democratic parties over the state Republican parties on the ground game. And unless

01:08the Trump campaign is going to be able to even that up, they're going to have a problem with

01:13marginally bigger turnout because of two things. One is more excitement about Kamala Harris than

01:20you had a bit about Joe Biden. And second of all, a much larger ground game activity undergoing in

01:25places like Wisconsin, where I saw a report today that suggested that the Republicans over the

01:30course of this entire year, which did include a special election for the Supreme Court earlier

01:35in the spring, that Democrats have outspent the Republicans on ground game activity 10 to 1.

01:41That's a problem. And you've got to get that evened up. Carl, I mean, this is something that

01:45has been talked about since the 2022 midterms and certainly after the 2020 election. Ground game,

01:52early voting, getting people out, the Democrats are better at it than Republicans. So what, you

01:57know, what if Republicans, why aren't they better at it by now? You're less than 100 days from this

02:02election cycle. So what do you say to them? Well, you know, maybe they are. I, you know, I'm not in

02:09a battleground state, but I was talking to somebody in a battleground state named Michigan

02:13who told me that a person who had been involved, a lawyer who'd been involved in Election Day

02:17activity in 2020 and 2022 said, you know what, nobody's bothered to call me for 2024. Now maybe

02:23that's because the Michigan Republican Party was absolutely a disaster area. They kicked out the

02:29old chairman who'd bankrupted the party. The new chairman, a very able guy named Pete Hoekstra,

02:33former congressman, former ambassador, took over and found nothing in the headquarters. So maybe

02:38the list of names is gone, but that's a problem if the Republicans don't have their game,

02:43their ground game together to get this election run. Well, it's not like they haven't had any

02:48warning over the last couple of cycles. So it's, you know, you've had a change at the top,

02:52Ronna McDaniel out at the RNC and Watley and Laura Trump in, in order to get the act together

03:01on that front. So, I mean, it's going to be, I think, you know, a story if that is,

03:06has not been changed, if that game is just dead in the water. Yeah. It's not just though at the

03:13national level, you've got to get this thing done at the state and local level. You have to have

03:17strong party organizations at the state and local level. It can't all be done out of Washington,

03:22DC. Yeah. All right. I mean, amazing. Carl, thank you very much.