Karl Rove says that instead of nominating Donald Trump, [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] or John Kasich “a fresh face might be the thing that could give us a chance to turn this election and win in November against Hillary.”
In an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Rove weighed in on the 2016 election and called on Trump to start “acting in a presidential manner” in order to turn his high unfavorable ratings around.
Hewitt asked Rove, “If Donald Trump is the nominee, how do you recover from a 30 percent favorable/63 percent unfavorable, as you note in your column today?”
Rove replied, “Look, I don’t think it’s possible. You know, he claims that he can be presidential when he needs to be. If he wants to change those numbers, he ought to start acting in a presidential manner, whatever he thinks that is, because right now, his numbers are abysmal. I mean, 30 percent, no one has ever been nominated for president with numbers this bad. And nobody has ever won the presidency with numbers anywhere near this bad by the time of the election. Now maybe the numbers are pliable for him. I doubt it. But he’d better show us some evidence by July 18th that he can change these numbers. He may be popular inside the Republican Party, though he has only gotten an average of 37 percent of the votes. But among general election voters, he’s more than 2-2-1 negative.”
Hewitt followed up, “Is Ted Cruz much more electable?”
Rove replied, “Well, the polls would indicate that he is somewhat more electable. He looked a lot more electable earlier in the year. But now, he is, along with Trump, fallen behind Hillary Clinton in the polling on a pretty regular basis. But you could make the case that he lacks the misogynist comments, and the four bankruptcies and all these other things that are causing trouble for Donald Trump. But yes, he is more electable.”
Hewitt then asked Rove, “Who is the most electable Republican, obviously, John Kasich could be on the list, but of people who could be available to run?”
Rove replied, “Yeah, look, I don’t know. I mean, I think we’re going to, we are not going to be able to be, and shouldn’t be guided simply by polls on this. I mean, we do need to understand the polls with regard to what the people are thinking about, the people who might be prospective candidates. But in terms of being able to match somebody head to head against Hillary Clinton, that’s going to be difficult to do.”
“We’ve got numbers on Kasich. And he is tending to, in most of the polls, beat her. And Ted Cruz runs a lot closer to Hillary than does Donald Trump, tends to, I’ve seen in some polls beat her, but mostly slightly behind here.”
Rove then said, “I think, though, that let’s say this. If we have somebody who we think has, has been battle tested, and has strong conservative principles and the ability to articulate them, and they are nominated at this convention, there will be a lot of acrimony from the people who were seeking the nomination. But if it’s somebody who has, you know, has those convictions that they can express in a compelling way, we could come out of the convention in relatively strong position, because we do have, you know, look.”
“Donald Trump excites a lot of enthusiasm,” Rove said. “But he also excites a lot of anger within the Republican Party and outside of the Republican Party. And a fresh face might be the thing that could give us a chance to turn this election and win in November against Hillary.”
