Yes, There Were Two Bigger Losers Than Steve Israel Tuesday: Karl Rove And Sheldon Adelson

Extreme right Republican crackpots like Bryan Fischer and Herman Cain are ginning up a GOP civil war, turning their bile against what passes for the party's "mainstream." Thursday morning Fischer tweeted: "Time for social conservatives to launch hostile takeover of Republican party. Put Karl Rove by door instead of head table." Five minutes later he was threatening Republican governors: "Any GOP gov who sets up a state exchange under ObamaCare is toast as presidential candidate in 2016." They're desperate to find a reason that explains how Romney, Akin, Mourdock, Allen West and virtually their whole "God loves rape" caucus was defeated Tuesday. And they're not looking inward. (Mainstream conservatives are fighting back, blaming the radicals and the Hate Talk fanatics like Limbaugh, as well as self-promoting freaks like Trump.)

We've been talking-- and will continue talking-- about how DCCC chairman Steve Israel wasted tens of millions of dollars in trying to resuscitate his moribund Blue Dog caucus and fill the congressional Democratic ranks with corrupt, conservative New Dems like himself. In the process, he failed to take back the House (even while Obama was rolling up a landslide electoral victory and Senate Democrats were making fools out of every single Inside-the-Beltway pundit. But Karl Rove had an even worse record than Steve Israel.

Rove (Bush's brain, remember?) collected and spent more money for election ads than the RNC, NRCC or NRSC. He also raked off millions for himself... of course. “If I had 1/100th of Karl Rove’s money," said lunatic fringe Republican activist Brent Bozell, "I would have been more productive than he was.” Almost all of Rove's candidates lost, not just Romney and Ryan but every one of the Senate candidates he backed with the exception-- and by a hair-- of Dean Heller of Nevada, who had the good fortune to be running against a corrupt New Dem, Shelley Berkley, who no principled progressive with any dignity could support.

As of October 17 American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS had spent $175,521,437, most of it trying to elect Romney. They spent $99,978,033 attacking the president and $13,317,756 in positive ads about Romney. These were the Democratic Senate targets of their hateful misleading TV ads:

• Tim Kaine (VA)- $11,287,908 ELECTED
• Tammy Baldwin (WI)- $7,407,615 ELECTED
• Shelley Berkley (NV)- $7,000,136
• Sherrod Brown (OH)- $6,363,714 ELECTED
• Jon Tester (MT)- $5,046,651 ELECTED
• Joe Donnelly (IN)- $4,714,126 ELECTED
• Bill Nelson (FL)- $4,022,607 ELECTED
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND)- $2,106,778 ELECTED
• Angus King (ME)- $1,014,095 ELECTED
• Bob Kerrey (NE)- $992,170
• Elizabeth Warren (MA)- $637,049 ELECTED
• Martin Heinrich (NM)- $435,220 ELECTED

His other operation, the Crossroads Generation Super PAC took in another $970,417 and spent $513,590 on attacking President Obama and trying to bolster Romney. So of the more than $175.5 million dollars Rove spent on candidates, only his attacks on Kerrey in deep red Nebraska and on the intolerably corrupt Berkley in Nevada yielded any positive results for the investors. The other $167.5 million was wasted. [Democrats Rove targeted in House races with gigantic expenditures but who won anyway included Tim Bishop (NY), Cheri Bustos (IL), Bill Enyart (IL), Steven Hosford (NV), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Raul Ruiz (CA), Louise Slaughter (NY). And at least he helped defeat Blue Dogs Leonard Boswell (IA), Gary McDowell (Michigan) and Brendan Mullen (IN).]

Wondering how Rove's mega-donors, like Adelson, Harold Simmons, Bob Perry and Bob Rowling-- each of whom gave millions of dollars to Rove to play with-- are feeling this week? Ultimate villager Michael Isikoff suggests that Rove "may have had the worst election night of anybody in American politics."

Not only did Rove insist on Fox News that Ohio was still winnable for Republican challenger Mitt Romney after all the TV networks had called it for President Barack Obama-- causing anchor Megyn Kelly to march down to the Fox "decision desk" mavens, who assured her on air that they were "99.9 percent" confident in their call-- but his trailblazing "independent" super PAC operation was virtually shut out on election night.

A study Wednesday by the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political spending, concluded that Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads, had a success rate of just 1 percent on $103 million in attack ads-- one of the lowest "returns on investment" (ROIs) of any outside spending group in this year's elections.

Organized Crime figure Sheldon Adelson is one of the richest men in the world. He's a gonif and a ruthless, amoral thug but he's certainly not smart. He was the biggest financial loser in American history Tuesday night. He and his wife contributed well over $100,000,000 this cycle and almost all of it was wasted. His own PAC spent $53 million and everyone who took money from it with the exception of Dean Heller, lost. Adelson made big bets on Romney, of course, but also helped underwrite the campaigns of fast-talking losers like George Allen, Connie Mack, Joe Kyrillos, David Dewhurst, Allen West, and psychotic Hollywood rabbi-to-the-stars/sex addict Schmuley Boteach, who ran for a House seat in New Jersey (and lost to Bill Pascrell 73.6-25.4%, Adelson's crazy PAC having contributed $918,789 to his effort, 5 times what Rabbi Schmuely raised himself).

On the other hand, Adelson paid for this video which may have had more to do with the ultimate defeat of Mitt Romney and the tarnishing of the Republican brand than any of his expensive subsequent efforts to make up for it. If you weren't paying close attention during the GOP primary, this is what Adelson-- eventually Romney's #1 financial supporter-- did to cripple him: