Everyone's understandably puzzling over what it means that Karl Rove is resigning now. There probably is some dark back story to it. Although, as Freud once famously said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
But there have been some intriguing analyses of the results of Rove's sordid career. Two of the best I've seen have appeared in Salon: We'll no more go a-Rove-ing by Sidney Blumenthal 08/13/07 and The collapse of Karl Rove by Lou Dubose 08/14/07. Rove biographer James Moore weighs in with The Rove Goes on ForeverHuffington Post 08/13/07.
Blumental turns some memorable phrases, like, "Rove's saga is a rags-to-riches success story of a political serial killer." But his article's greatest value is in its description of the political strategy Rove followed and its consequences. He writes, "Rove's merger of politics and policy was an effort to forge a total one-party state." He also points out a possible dark side to Rove's departure, as strange a thought as that may be. With Rove out, "President Bush will be left with the unalloyed counsel of Vice President Dick Cheney, whose endgame transcends Rove's machinations."
Dubose gives us a glimpse of the toxic soup of Texas fundamentalist Republicanism out of which Rove's national political strategy came. "Social conservatives [i.e., Christian fundamentalists] had already joined together with economic conservatives when Ronald Reagan got into bed with the Rev. Jerry Falwell. But it was Rove who consecrated the union."
The generally uninteresting conservative columnist Debra Saunders, who uses most of her columns to whine about some real or imagined hypocrisy of the Democrats, interviewed Rove on Monday for Rove - Decider or divider?San Francisco Chronicle 08/14/07.
Talk about "projection"! Rove accuses the Democrats of being the ones that applied the most rigid attitudes that he himself promoted for the Republican Party in recent years. For example, Rove told her:
"I think a number of Democrats never accepted (Bush) as legitimate and instead adopted a strategy of blind obstructionism," he answered.
Moreover, some Democrats "hated" Bush, and they were joined by a group of Democrats who "for tactical reasons, said that we can never give (Bush) a political victory, and anything that passes any part of his agenda is a political victory for him and we can't tolerate that."
Can anyone who was not in a coma the last seven years actually believe that the Democrats "adopted a strategy of blind obstructionism"? I wish they would adopt a strategy of obstructionism on starting a war on Iran!
How can even Karl Rove say nonsense like this without choking with laughter? Maybe he was choking with laughter, but Saunders doesn't say that. This comes just days after a significant minority of Democrats caved in on the appalling FISA bill to give Attorney General Abu Gonzales the Torture Guy sweeping discretion to authorize warrantless wiretaps on American citizens.
Rove also told the apparently highly credulous Saunders, ""You know, you'd be shocked and surprised to learn how much the president reached out to Democrats." Yes, we would all be surprised.
David Neiwert at his Orcinus blog frequently talks about the phenomenon of psychological projection, e.g., The projection strategy 07/16/06. He argues that looking carefully at what rightwingers accuse The Liberals of doing is often a good indicator of what they themselves are doing or want to do. To borrow a phrase from Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby, try to imagine he said it!
"I challenge you - take a look at any one of the president's remarks," Rove noted. "Take a look at what was routinely said by the Clinton White House and the Clinton press secretary and what was routinely said by Republicans on the Hill." Their tone was "deeply personal."
"Now the Democrats have continued that. You know, (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid - you'd think it was George L. Bush, with L standing for liar. (Reid) routinely uses the word liar about the president. The president would never think about using such an appellation for Sen. Reid."
Of course, Bush routinely accuses the Democrats of treason by saying that their criticisms of his failed Iraq War policies are aiding the enemy and risk getting American soldiers killed by undermining their morale. But, again, anyone who hasn't been in a deep coma for at least the last seven years can see the problem in such a statement.
I guess we have to give Rove credit for, what? Bald-faced shamelessness?
Saunders displays her own muddled thinking by first treating us to this:
Should Bush take off the gloves? That's what many conservatives think.
[Rove replied,] "Well, maybe, maybe."
Then she makes this remarkable piece of analysis:
Nonetheless, this White House gave up too easily. At time of war, the Bushies should have worked harder to include Democrats when the military was winning plaudits in Iraq. Also, Bush should have tried to enlist Democratic support on Social Security reform, just as he worked with Democrats on No Child Left Behind. That's what voters sent Bush to Washington for - to get the job done.
It's amazing what an abundance of cluelessness can be crammed into two sentences.
The "Bushies", operating on that gentle soul Karl Rove's political strategy, never had any intention of including Democrats in any other sense than to first bully them into giving Bush blank checks to do what he wanted, to be followed by trashing them for being sympathizers of The Terrorists and traitors and defeatists. Joe Lieberman was a bit of an exception: they use him as a Trojan Horse in the Democratic caucus. Fortunately, his rejection by Democratic primary voters in Connecticut in 2006 reduced his value in that regard, because much of the public is now aware that Lieberman is not really a Democrat.
Bush's famous compromise with the Democrats, led on that issue by Sen. Ted Kennedy, is a classic example of the Bush/Cheney/Rove notion of bipartisanship. The heart of the compromise was that Bush got the mandatory testing he wanted and the Democrats got an agreement to increase funding for school programs. The tests were mandated and went into effect. Then Bush and the Republicans refused to provide the additional funding.
It seems to me that there are still Democrats in Congress who don't really understand how pitifully little Bush cares about "bipartisanship".
Blumenthal also reminds us in his Rove article what kind of "press corp" we have, citing David Broder, The Dean Of All The Pundits:
After the Republican victories in 2002, an enraptured press corps celebrated Rove. "Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove," wrote David Broder, the lead political columnist for the Washington Post, on May 18, 2003. "In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land."
And it's that seriously flawed institution, the American Establishment press, that makes me unwilling to embrace the widespread assumption that the White House will be a relatively easy prize for the Democrats to win in 2008. Because we're already being treated to a barrage of fool stories about John Edwards' hair style and Hillary Clinton's flip-flopping and general un-womanliness, while we hear simultaneously about those manly men like Benito Giulani and Fred Thompson, who are ready to lead the Daddy Party to triumph over The Terrorists.
Whether Karl Rove is in the political picture or not, we have a corporate press that is seriously, major-league dysfunctional. And that dysfunction works far more against the Democrats than it does the Republicans. The Democratic candidate for President will have to fight the malfunctions of the Establishment press as much as the Republican candidate.
