Karl Rove thinks Republicans have a shot at winning many 2014 Senate races if they take steps to prevent history from repeating itself.
"Republican success will depend on having quality Senate candidates," the GOP strategist wrote in on op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. "Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock self-destructed last fall, and other candidates squandered important opportunities."
Rove issued a similar warning in February regarding the Republican party's past candidates. Rove said that former congressman Akin -- whose 2012 campaign took a turn for the worse when he claimed that "legitimate rape" victims had ways to try to "shut that whole thing down" -- wasn't the best the Republican party could do.
"It's amazing that people think Todd Akin was the best we could've come up with," Rove said in a Fox News interview. "He wasn't even a tea partier."
Mourdock, an Indiana Republican, made similar comments about rape, arguing that pregnancy from rape "was something God intended."
As The Hill pointed out on Thursday, Democrats currently maintain control of the Senate, 55 to 45, and will be defending 21 seats in 2014, whereas Republicans will only need to defend 14. In Rove's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the GOP strategist wrote that "open seats are more likely to flip, and so far only two Republicans are retiring (Georgia's Saxby Chambliss and Nebraska's Mike Johanns) while six Democrats are, including three in states handily carried by Mr. Romney (West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana)."
Rove thinks Republicans have a chance in Georgia, "unless a candidate ill-suited for the general election sneaks through the primary."
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