Two loud, self-confident forecasters of a Mitt Romney victory, Karl Rove and Dick Morris, have been temporarily banished from the right-thinking, Republican-leaning Fox News Channel, according to a report in New York magazine.
On orders from Fox News boss Roger Ailes, deputy Bill Shine and all producers must get approval from on high before booking either man. Rove was once known as “Bush’s brain” for his work as strategist for President George W. Bush. Morris is the Bill Clinton strategist disgraced when caught sucking on the toes of a hooker at the Hotel Jefferson in Washington, D.C.
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Rove and Morris became barometers of inaccuracy in the just-completed presidential race.
“Sometime after the cock crows on the morning of November 7, Mitt Romney will be declared America’s 45th president,” Rove wrote in his final column before the election. He predicted that Romney would get 285 electoral votes to 253 for President Obama.
The actual result was Obama getting 332 votes in the Electoral College, including eight of the nine hotly contested “swing states,” to 206 for Romney.
“Here comes the landslide,” said Morris just before the election. He forecast a Romney sweep of swing states, with such Democratic bastions as New Jersey and Oregon creating before the Republican tide.
Morris, who has transitioned from Manhattan liberal to far right, went further. He forecast that Republicans would take control of the U.S. Senate. “The most likely outcome? Eight GOP takeaways and two givebacks for a net gain of six,” he wrote. “A 53-47 Senate, just like we have now, only opposite. Barack Obama’s parting gift to the Democratic Party.
When votes were counted, however, Democrats had picked up a net of two seats to gain a 55-45 advantage in Congress’ upper chamber.
On election night, Rove disputed his own network’s prediction of an Obama victory in Ohio as “premature.”
These guys have been wrong before. Morris predicted that Hillary Clinton would lose her 2000 Senate race. Rove saw Republicans holding their own, and even gaining ground, on the eve of Democrats’ sweep in the 2006 mid-term elections.
