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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is dismissing actress Ashley Judd as an "attractive woman" who does not deserve to be a Kentucky senator because she owns a home in Scotland.

During an interview with Paul on Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley pointed out that a recent attack ad created by Karl Rove's Crossroad GPS suggested that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was threatened by the possibility that Judd could take his Senate seat.

"Is he at this point looking weak?" Crowley wondered.

"You know, when I heard Ashley Judd might run for office, I thought maybe it was [the British] Parliament because she lives in Scotland half of the year," Paul smirked. "But no, I think really part of politics is making sure that people know about who you're running against."

"Ashley Judd is a famous actress, she's an attractive woman and presents herself well and -- from what I understand -- is articulate," he added. "But the thing is she doesn't really represent Kentucky. I mean, she was a representative for Tennessee last year. She lives in Tennessee. So, I think you do need to make sure people know about that so people don't think she's really from Kentucky or lives here."

According to her biography, Kentucky is Judd's childhood home. She moved there in 1972 after her parents divorced, and the actress is considering moving back to Kentucky to challenge McConnell.

"I cherish Kentucky, heart and soul, and while I'm very honored by the consideration, we have just finished an election, so let's focus on coming together to keep moving America's families, and especially our kids, forward," Judd said last year.

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As Digby noted, it seems the Republicans are now trying to kill the Frankenstein monster they created:

Karl Rove was instrumental in creating this monster. Now it's got a mind of its own.

It's hard to know how this will play out. The Tea Party is really just the re-branding of the far right of the Republican Party. But it may just be that the establishment made a mistake in doing that. They don't see themselves as Republicans anymore. They see themselves as a distinct movement that wants to explicitly run the Republican Party.

The wingnuts have always had real power within their Party but they didn't know it. Now they do. And they have spent the last 30 years having people like Karl Rove rev them up and expand their egos into believing they represent a majority of Americans and have a responsibility to hew to their principles no matter what. It was a good way to market conservatism. But it was never true.

Rove, Tea Party in GOP civil war:

As they try to pick up the pieces from last fall’s defeat, the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP are at each other’s throats.

Karl Rove, fresh off the multi-million dollar disaster that was 2012, has launched a new initiative, The New York Times reported Saturday. Known as the Conservative Victory Project, the group, a spin-off of Rove’s American Crossroads, will help recruit establishment Republicans, as well as defend Senate incumbents against challenges from more conservative candidates.

The aim, in a nutshell, is to push back against the Tea Party and bring the GOP’s nominating process back under the control of the party’s Washington power-brokers. In recent cycles, Tea Party-backed Senate candidates have won the Republican nomination over more moderate GOPers, only to be defeated in the general election. In several cases—think of Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks—they’ve been done in thanks in part to campaign trail slip-ups that more seasoned candidates might have avoided.

But the news has triggered a full-blown revolt among conservative activists, both inside and outside Washington. Read on...

And here's more from Steve Benen: Welcoming the Conservative Victory Project to the field:

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From Democracy Now, once again Amy Goodman's the only one out there reporting on Rove's stolen elections and the death of Mike Connell when he was about to testify against Rove about what they did on Ohio. Here's another reminder of how disgusting it is that Rove is out there gaining power again instead of sitting in a jail cell: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom: Craig Unger on Stolen Votes, Political Attacks, Billionaire Ties:

In a new book, author Craig Unger examines the return of Karl Rove, the man who masterminded the rise of George W. Bush from governor of Texas to a two-term presidency, who advised Bush during two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who was at the center of two of the biggest scandals of the Bush administration: the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and the U.S. attorneys scandal. While Rove was almost indicted for the Plame affair, he has reinvented himself to become the most powerful political operative in America. Heading up the American Crossroads super PAC and the affiliated nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, Rove has built up a war chest that has given Mitt Romney a significant cash advantage in the fundraising race with President Obama. In "Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power," Unger writes that Rove’s ambitions are not simply about winning elections, but represent "a far more grandiose vision — the forging of a historic re-alignment of America’s political landscape, the transformation of America into effectively a one-party state.

Full transcript available at the link above.

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Rachel Maddow went after Karl Rove for his bizarre appearance on Fox News last week where, when asked about the complaint filed against his so-called "advocacy group," Crossroads GPS, Rove went off on a tangent and started ranting about Bob Bauer, the lawyer who filed the complaint. Rove claimed that Bauer represented the whistle blower Dana Jill Simpson in the Don Siegelman case, which as Maddow noted, is not true, and has nothing to do with the type of ads his group is running and whether they're violating the law.

Chris Matthews did a segment on Rove's group with Dan Froomkin and Joe Conason last month where they were looking at whether the IRS might go after Rove's group for the abuse of their tax status.

The Huffington Post has more on the dust up between Rove and the Obama campaign's attorney here: Bob Bauer, Obama Campaign's Top Lawyer, Demands Retraction From Karl Rove:

The Obama campaign's top lawyer fired off a letter to Karl Rove Thursday, demanding a retraction of a "mystifying" comment Rove made and raising questions about his upcoming appearance at a Mitt Romney campaign event.

The letter is the second that Bob Bauer has sent to Rove this week. The first argued that Rove could no longer insist that his advocacy group, Crossroads GPS, was policy oriented -- a distinction that allowed it to shield the names of its donors. The follow-up letter, obtained by The Huffington Post, makes that same point, arguing that there is no "social welfare" component to the group's operations.

But it also challenges Rove in more direct terms. Bauer hints that Rove, the chief strategist to former President George W. Bush, is colluding with Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, by homing in on Rove's presence at a Romney retreat in Utah this upcoming weekend. He also expands the scope of his complaint to Rove's role with American Crossroads, the super PAC arm of Crossroads GPS. [...]

The letter also picks up on an exchange between the two that was escalated Wednesday night when Rove accused Bauer of having a political vendetta against him that was rooted in earlier legal conflict.

In an appearance on Fox News, Rove insisted that Bauer had represented Dana Jill Simpson, the former Republican operative in Alabama who served as a whistleblower against Rove and others in the case of former Gov. Don Siegelman.

"This is the kind of guy Bob Bauer is," Rove told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren. "I know what he’s doing. It is not going to change us in one way shape or form from doing exactly what we’re entitled to do under the law."

But it turns out that Bauer never represented Simpson. Nor, he wrote in the Thursday letter, did he have "anything at all to do with her allegations about you or any appearance by her on 60 Minutes."

"The identity of her lawyer is a matter of public record – a lawyer I have also never met," Bauer added. "Please promptly correct these remarks on the record." Read on...

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After bringing in former Bush adviser Karl Rove for some free air time on his Super PAC, Crossroads GPS and their latest attack ad on President Obama for not cleaning up his former boss' mess quickly enough, Rove naturally doesn't think it would be a good idea for the Obama administration to remind anyone about just how big the mess really was he inherited.

Rove also said he doesn't think Mitt Romney needs to separate himself from George W. Bush's policies because he's "going to have his own policies," ignoring of course that Mitt Romney's policies are nothing but more of the same or a doubling down of the very policies we saw under George W. Bush that got us into the economic mess we're in now.

Romney wants more tax cuts for the rich, less regulation even after the economic crisis caused by Wall Street. He wants to gut our social safety nets and he's endorsed Paul Ryan's budget. He's also surrounded himself with former Bush advisers. But pay no attention to that, says Karl Rove.

And par for the course, they're blaming the economy not improving enough to suit them on President Obama, ignoring completely the Congress he's been forced to deal with and the fact that even when Democrats had control of the Congress after he was elected, you're not going to get anything passed that didn't suit the whims of the Joe Liebermans and the Ben Nelsons and the Max Baucuses of the world and their ilk and if he did not work with the conservative elements within his own party, nothing was going to get passed.

I always find it amazing that one of the people primarily responsible for putting our economy in a ditch has the gall to appear on television and whine about anyone reminding the public of how terrible his administration's record was and that's putting it mildly. I would say the last thing any Democrat needs to do is take campaign strategy advice from the likes of Karl Rove.

The fact that this man is sitting on television laying out a strategy to defeat President Obama rather than serving jail time for the D.O.J. scandal, the Plame leak, the illegal prosecution of Don Siegelman or the host of other atrocities he's responsible for shows just how broken our political and legal systems are right now. No bad deed when they're large enough goes unrewarded these days and this guy's the poster child as proof of that along with his other cronies that served under Bush.

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This is the type of segment on Chris Matthews' show Hardball that makes me want to just throw something at the television set. It seems Karl Rove's PAC, Crossroads GPS has a new lie filled attack ad out and the best we got with any acknowledgment of that fact in the clip above, was Cynthia Tucker calling it "a good ad" and admitting there are "a couple of lies" in it, but hey, that's just politics.

Well, that's fine and good that yes, we know politicians and people like Karl Rove tell lies, but isn't the job of reporters to let the viewers know what those lies are and why they're not true? Instead we have Matthews showing the ad and Tucker and former RNC head Michael Steele discussing which voters it's supposed to influence, and a discussion on the fact that we don't know where the money is coming from to run the ad and who is donating to these Super PACs.

I'm all for getting the money out of politics and full disclosure on these ads as all of them said they were in the segment above, but I would have appreciated a conversation about the fact that the ad doesn't just have "a couple of lies." It's packed full of them, not to mention the irony of Karl Rove not being willing to stick his name on the ad, so the unfortunate television viewers who happen to watch it will know that Rove is the one responsible for these ads blaming Obama for not cleaning up the mess his old boss left us, regardless of who's donating to his PAC.

We got a lot more honest assessment of the ad from Steve Benen today over at The Maddow Blog: The best lies money can buy:

The New York Times seems quite impressed with the latest attack ad from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, which is poised to blanket the airwaves in swing states. The Times calls it "deeply researched," "delicately worded," and "low key."

The paper neglected to mention another phrase: misleading to an offensive degree.

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On this Tuesday's Hardball, Chris Matthews spoke to The Huffington Post's Dan Froomkin and National Memo's Joe Conason about Karl Rove's group, Crossroads GPS and their potential violations of FEC rules and their more obvious violations of the stricter IRS rules on how anyone claiming 501(c)(4) privileged tax status is allowed to spend their money.

Froomkin wrote about this in his article at The Huffington Post: IRS To Take On Karl Rove? Tax Laws Could Take A Bite Out Of Secret Political Spending :

Top Republican political strategist Karl Rove's method of secretly funneling unlimited contributions from big donors was so hugely successful in the 2010 campaign that Democrats are now trying to copy it. But his model may yet end up backfiring spectacularly.

In one scenario, groups like Rove's Crossroads Grassroots Political Strategies could find themselves subject to massive fines, ranging as high as 35 to 70 percent of the money they received in secret donations.

In another scenario, their deep-pocket donors could be hit by a 35 percent tax on their contributions.

Rove may well have found a way around the nation's federal election laws. But now the key question is whether the Internal Revenue Service is willing to be assertive. Because if it is, then just like with Al Capone, it could be the IRS that gets him.

In Crossroads GPS's solicitations for money, the group describes itself as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization, and due to a controversial loophole in federal campaign finance rules, the names of donors to those organizations do not have to be disclosed publicly.

But contrary to popular belief, Rove's group has not formally attained 501(c)(4) status. The group's application, requesting the IRS to classify it as a "social welfare" group, is still pending.

And while the designation is typically not much more than a formality -- organizations routinely call themselves (c)(4) groups before they've been formally approved -- tax and campaign finance experts contacted by The Huffington Post said the IRS could well deny Crossroads GPS's application. Read on...

Here's a press release from The Campaign Legal Center on the matter as well: April 17, 2012 - IRS Urged to Curb Crossroads GPS Abuse of Tax Status in Wake of Secret $10 million Contribution to Run Attack Ads:

In a letter sent to the IRS today, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center again called on the agency to investigate and take appropriate enforcement action against Crossroads GPS for its apparent misuse of a privileged tax status. The letter specifically calls attention to a secret $10 million dollar contribution to the 501(c)(4) group to run attack ads that The Washington Post recently brought to light.

Political operatives are increasingly turning to the 501(c)(4) tax status to hide their donors from the public despite the fact that they are not “social welfare” organizations but are primarily dedicated to supporting and opposing candidates and are poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on election advertising this year.

“The continued refusal by the IRS to reign in scofflaws abusing a privileged tax status has only encouraged even more blatant disregard for the law by these groups and their anonymous funders,” said J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center. “A secret ten million dollar contribution to run attack ads shows pure contempt for the law, the agency’s willingness to enforce it, and the public’s right to know who is funding our elections. The IRS must do its job and enforce the law even in the face of political pressure to let the scofflaws continue.”

More there and as they noted: To read the full letter, click here.

Transcript below the fold.

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Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren isn't letting an attack ad by a Karl Rove group dampen her support for Occupy Wall Street.

"At Occupy Wall Street, protesters attack police, do drugs and trash public parks," the Crossroads GPS ad claims. "They support radical redistribution of wealth and violence, but Warren boasts, 'I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. ... I support what they do.'"

WCVB's Janet Wu asked Warren Thursday if it was fair for Rove to link her so closely to the Occupy movement.

"It fair to say that I've been protesting Wall Street for years and years," Warren replied. "I'm am glad to see lots of people start to really push on this issue."

"Let's face it. Something's badly broken in America right now. We've got a middle class that has been hammered financially for a generation, and we've got a Washington that works only for those that can hire an army of lobbyists and an army of lawyers. And that means it's not working for the rest of us. So yeah, I protest that. I've been worried about that. I've been working on that for a very long time."

"So, their mission, their tactics, their philosophy, you all agree with?" Wu pressed.

"No, let's be clear: Everybody has to follow the law," Warren explained. "There's no exception on that. And more to the point, though, this is an independent, organic movement. It's its own voice. It has its own pieces. It will go in its own direction. We don't speak with a unitary voice anywhere about what needs to be changed. There are lots of people, lots of voices. Whether they've taken to the streets, whether they are sitting at home just saying, 'This doesn't work anymore.'"

She added: "We need a lot of voices saying, 'We got to have change.' Because it's clear Washington's not looking to change on their own and Wall Street is going to keep pumping money into Washington, pumping it into elections, to make sure their way is the dominant way in this country. I think that's wrong."