Karl Rove: Dems facing their own 'Tea Party' revolution

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Karl Rove on whether the Democratic Party is facing its own Tea Party rebellion

Are the Democrats facing their own Tea Party revolution?

Karl Rove, the former adviser to former President George W. Bush, says “yes.”

“A few freshman members in some of the safest seats in the country pursuing an ideologically ‘pure’ agenda that riles up the party’s base but could endanger the moderates who were essential to winning the majority,” Former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., wrote Monday in Politico Magazine about how the new crop of Democratic lawmakers mirrored the Tea Party movement of 2010. “It’s all so familiar.”

The difference, according to Rove, is that the new crop of progressive lawmakers “already found a large number of so-called progressives over there,” referring to so-called “Democratic socialists” including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

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“There’s a bigger problem for the Democrats, I think they face today, than I think the Republicans faced in 2011 when they took control of the House again,” Rove told “America’s Newsroom.”

TEA PARTY TURNS TEN

Rove said the new crop of freshman lawmakers will make it harder for moderate Democrats to be honest about their platforms and dissociate from the far-left members of their party.

“My sense is, is that that it’s going to be hard for a lot of Democrats to be able to say, ‘well, I’m not [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], I’m not [Ilhan] Omar, I’m not [Rashida] Tlaib, I’m not Jerry Nadler, I’m not Elijah Cummings,” Rove told Sandra Smith. “I’m not all of these left-wing ideas. 'Medicare for all,' guaranteed job, guaranteed wage, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s going to be hard for them to take that balancing.”

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Rove also said that while it appeared the injection of progressive ideology was pushing the party forward, the more moderate members elected to Congress gave the Democrats power in the House.

“For all that we pay attention to people like AOC and Congresswoman Omar and Congresswoman Tlaib and Maxine Waters and Al Green and Elijah Cummings and Jerry Nadler and a lot of the people pressing for more extreme views,” Rove said. “The people who put the Democrats back in power are basically people who are from centrist districts that were occupied by Republican members in the suburbs in places like Chicago and Philadelphia and New York and Atlanta and Dallas and Houston.”

Fox News' Sandra Smith contributed to this report.