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Karl Rove Is Just in Hiding
Ready for his next smear job on US Democrats.
Prez with beloved 'Turd Blossom'
A virus would be harmless if it couldn't replicate. The H5N1 bird flu germ could spend all day being as nasty as it pleased and yet not a single pigeon would develop the sniffles were it not for that unfortunate ability to multiply and spread. Which is why knowledgeable opponents of George W. Bush have generally reserved their greatest enmity not for the president himself, but for his primary means of viral transmission. Karl Rove, the former Bush campaign manager who has just resigned his position as deputy chief of staff and senior White House advisor, was always Dubya's contagion. Many will celebrate his departure from the scene. They celebrate too soon.
As is customary in such cases Rove cited family reasons for his departure. It's touching to consider Rove in his new role as family man. Perhaps he will now encourage his son Andrew to study harder in college, using a vicious television smear campaign. Surely the old habits will be hard to break.
But then, there is no reason to believe he has any intention of changing. Rove's value to Bush/Cheney was never as a White House advisor anyway, and so his resignation this week means little. Rove is a warrior. Bush has no more wars left to fight -- at least not the electoral kind. Karl Rove is now free to focus his dark arts on whichever candidate emerges as the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. And the likely winner, Hillary Clinton, is what military types refer to as a target-rich environment.
Bush's brain, ready for transplant
Rove's reputation as an electoral Voldemort has slipped in the last year. Republican losses in the 2006 midterm elections destroyed his frightening aura of invincibility. Yet even Rove could not be expected to turn a political tide in full flood, and a disgusted American public would not be denied their chance to vote on Iraq. But the 2008 Republican presidential candidate will not be tied directly to the Bush/Cheney invasion fiasco. The Republicans will have the chance to start fresh. Should he choose to run the show, the man George W. Bush liked to call "Turd Blossom" will be free to engage in his usual wacky shenanigans.
There is no guarantee that Rove will run the 2008 Republican campaign. It may not even be likely -- the eventual nominee will have his own manager. Still, Rove will likely be in the mix somewhere. At the very least his example will guide the party's efforts.
Rove was often described as "Bush's brain." That's the sort of item you might want to leave off a resume, all things considered. More flattering to say that Rove was Candidate Bush's political majordomo, a strategist who mastered the art of negative definition. Look upon his masterpiece and tremble: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a hired gang of character assassins who took to the airwaves in 2004 to tell unverifiable stories about Senator John Kerry's medal-winning military career. Three years later the audacity is still breathtaking. On behalf of a president and vice president who pulled every string to avoid service in Vietnam, a gang of marginal cranks acquired mysterious funding to air slick TV ads defaming the record of John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam vet. And moreover, it worked. It's true that Kerry was a bad campaigner. Mostly though, he lacked the pure amoral genius of his enemies.
Look out Clinton, Obama
There will be much to despise about the Bush legacy. Rove's election tactics must be the most troubling of all, because they have the most implications for the future. Bad as Bush's second term has been, people sometimes forget that his first term was arguably the worst ever. After four years of epic ineptitude Bush was safely reelected in 2004 with none of the judicial prestidigitation required in 2000. That was largely the work of Osama Bin Laden and Karl Rove.
Despite the disaster that has followed from two terms of a Republican White House there is no reason to believe the American voter has suddenly become wise and judicious. Nasty and unscrupulous worked last time. The bucket of feces that smeared the Democrats in 2004 stands ready. Same bucket, new feces -- there will be plenty of options for attacking Senator Clinton, a polarizing figure in American politics.
In the unlikely event that the Democrats turn to Barack Obama there is no telling how low the Republicans will stoop.
Don't put anything past them. They are still the party of Karl Rove.
Related Tyee stories:
- Bushed! It Couldn't Be Worse
Politics, truth, justice and the American Way are currently incompatible. - Bushed! It's All for the Best
Why we're better off without 'go it together' Kerry for president. - Best of the Muck
Thanks to YouTube, you may sample the sleaziest political ads.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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5
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Booker
4 years ago
Wisdom
That's true -- the dirty tricks will continue to work, but the American public did give Rove a mighty rebuke last November, and candidates will think twice before they want to see their association with him emblazoned in the morning newspaper. Rove's project for a permanent Republican majority failed, as the late Molly Ivins predicted it would back in November 2004:
Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.
The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.
http://freepress.org/columns/display/1/2004/980
Americans will continue to elect many Republicans, and there is at least 30% of the population (Bush's current approval rating) that is beyond hope. But the tide has ebbed and if the Dems don't screw up too badly, that tide will start rolling back.
Bailey
4 years ago
So...?
So you're saying we should wire a dead Democrat around Karl Rove's neck until he learns to be nicer to Democrats?
Or wire Karl around dubyas neck?
I always kinda liked chickens. I like this way better.
no1important
4 years ago
To bad there is not a war
To bad there is not a war crimes tribunal awaiting him.
Yammer
4 years ago
The Republican Advantage
Complaints about Bush's odourous policies (I like the chicken-collar analogy) will only sway the rational. That's a substantial percentage of the electorate. However, the Republicans already have the Fundamentalist Christian vote in the bag. Republicans have assiduously courted the Moral Majority for three decades and fundies really started to come through for them in the Reagan era. The Dems have done nothing to counter that effort. They could challenge the Republicans on their ground of religion (by pointing out that Jesus' philosophy of compassion and example of selflessness has very little to do with the rapacity, ferociousness, and individual acquisitiveness shown by the Bush gang). Or they could take the more progressive strategy of making a virtue of the separation of church and state, to try to take religiousness out of the equation.
They can't do both, and they're not doing either. They are starting the race down 25%.
I think this is why the Ron Paul candidacy is so exciting to me. He's not a liberal but a paleoconservative. He can't be out-family-valued, there's nobody more conservative than he is. But his policies come straight from the Constitution, and therefore his actions promise liberty, humility, and non-interference. The USA could use a dose of that.
effle-ess
4 years ago
Liberty, humilty & non-interference?
Interesting comments Yammer, but I cringe whenever I am reminded how obviously intelligent thinking people, like you for instance, are taken in by lovely sounding abstractions, constitutionally enshrined or not.
It doesn't matter whether those--I will call them nobel quests--are written into constitutions, USA's or anyone else's. And the "family values" are not to be separated from the fundamental ideologies they connote, make no mistake about that.