Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on Thursday admitted that the party’s recent shortcomings were due to bad candidates saying “biologically stupid things,” but called Karl Rove’s efforts to field more electable nominees in Senate races a “fool’s game.”
“Listen, I don’t think our platform is the issue,” Priebus told reporters during a trip to Des Moines, Iowa, according Radio Iowa.I think a lot of times it’s some of these biologically stupid things that people say, you know, that I believe caused a lot of the problems.”
Priebus was referring to candidates such as Todd Akin, whose inflammatory remark about rape helped seal his fate last year in what was a winnable Senate race for the GOP. The failures in 2012 by Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana served as the impetus for Rove’s new effort to find more electable Republican candidates in Senate races, a move that has set off something of a civil war on the right between the establishment and tea party types.
Priebus said Rove has the right to go forward with the project, but the chairman said he doesn’t like the idea of a group handpicking a nominee.
“Obviously there’s a lot of groups out there that are picking winners and losers in primaries, right? It’s been for happening a long time,” Priebus said. “…Personally, as an RNC (chair), I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe the party should pick winners and losers in primaries and I think it’s, historically, if you look at it, it’s a bit of a fool’s game because you can’t actually predict some of the things that go on.”
