Did Karl the Kingmaker overplay his hand?

Teabaggers, I AM your brain!

Karl Rove and Haley Barbour may have won the battle in Mississippi, and won it in a time-tested, ruthless Bush Republican way, but have they now lost the war? Quite possibly. Consider what it took to beat the tea party there, and how enraged the rabble now is.  Was Mississippi a real epiphany moment for the GOP base sheep? There is even talk among some outlier tea party leaders in the state of supporting the "Blue Dog" Democrat running against Cochran as a way to teach nasty Karl a lesson. That likely won't come to much, but consider what this all now portents for what it will take to install JEB! as the Republican nominee in 2016.  The blood-in-the-streets lengths required to buy Thad Cochran a Senate seat he already held may now pale in comparison to the machinations necessary to buy the Bush Crown Prince even a shot at an office he will never hold.

Republicans don't award the presidential nomination in a transparent and systematic manner that mirrors a proportional representation of the overall primary votes.  Democrats have followed this method pretty much ever since a party revolt following the convention debacle of 1968.  The GOP's memories of 1964 and 1976 have pushed them in the opposite direction.

Winning Republican primaries and caucuses doesn't necessarily add up to getting delegates and winning the nomination.  It is far more complex than that, and by design. In small and sparsely populated states where grassroots movements could embarrass the party establishment, primaries are often mere "beauty contests," and delegates are selected by party bosses at state conventions. In caucus states, the media-publicized first round caucuses at the precinct level (think the Iowa caucus) award no national convention delegates at all; they merely select delegates to an ever ascending series of caucuses that lead to a state convention, controlled securely by state party leaders, which picks the national convention delegates. Big states that require lots of money to compete effectively in primaries award all national convention delegates (100 percent of them) automatically by party rules to a majority primary vote winner (meaning the one with the most money to make the biggest media ad buy).

It's easy to see how Karl Rove and his money machines can out-muscle, out-spend, and out-maneuver any tea party opposition in such a system, even a united tea party opposition.  And he will do whatever it takes, use every material resource at his disposal, and jettison every ethical scruple that gets in the way in order to do it.  And it may get real ugly.  And make sublimely arresting national political theater.

Hot Air: Outside groups spent $23 million to crush the tea party in GOP primaries this year