We all know what a failure Karl Rove has been, but now there is a new book coming out detailing the failures of Karl Rove and the GOP Establishment going back to the first Bush campaign for re-election.  American Thinker has a write up about it:
Not since 1984 and the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan have the Republicans had a more winnable election than the 2012 presidential election. Yet the Republican Establishment managed to lose to the worst and most vulnerable President in modern history, with historically poor approval ratings, unemployment averaging over 8.7% during his entire first term, a stagnant economy and someone who ran the smallest and most absurd of all possible re-election campaigns.
Why and how did this happen?  In his new book WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost...Again, C. Edmund Wright, a frequent contributor to the American Thinker website and senior consultant to the Winning Our Future Super PAC in 2012, clearly and cogently lays out not only the factors that resulted in the ignominious defeat of Mitt Romney, but the historical reasons behind the rise and fall of the Republican Establishment and it's consultant class.
Mr. Wright accurately points out that the loss in 2012 had been in the works since 1992.  Why?  Primarily because this is when the establishment, made up of career politicians, deep pocket "country-club" Republicans, a newly emerging political consultant coterie, and an incestuous lobbyist cabal, abandoned Ronald Reagan and what he stood for.   More telling was the unprecedented success in 1992 and 1994 of a third party candidate, Ross Perot, whose campaign was based on overturning the status quo in both parties, but particularly the Republican Party.  Yet this lesson was lost on the Establishment hierarchy as they grew more entrenched in their make believe world.