Karl Rove, the top White House political strategist, is coming off the worst election defeat of his career to face a daunting task: saving the president’s agenda with a Congress not only controlled by Democrats, but also filled with Republican members resentful of the way he and the White House conducted the losing campaign.
White House officials say President Bush has every intention of keeping Mr. Rove on through the rest of his term. And Mr. Rove’s associates say he intends to stay, with the goal of at least salvaging Mr. Bush’s legacy and, in the process, his own.
But serious questions remain about how much influence Mr. Rove can wield and how high a profile he can assume in Washington after being so closely identified with this year’s Republican losses, not to mention six years of often brutal attacks on the same Democrats in line to control Congress for the remainder of Mr. Bush’s presidency.
Things have not gotten off to a great start since the election. Democrats are taking Mr. Rove’s continued influence at the White House — as well as some of its recent moves, like nominating conservative judges for the federal bench — as a sign that Mr. Bush’s conciliatory pledges of bipartisanship will prove to be fleeting.…Republicans on Capitol Hill said anger ran deep over Mr. Bush’s decision to announce the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld one day after the election instead of weeks before, when some say it could have kept the Senate in their party’s hands and limited Democratic gains in the House. Mr. Rove was among those at the White House who had argued that to announce Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation before Election Day would have been tantamount to affirming criticism that the war in Iraq was failing, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.“There is lingering resentment on that,” Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said of the timing of the announcement. Asked if he expected the White House to take as much of a lead in setting the Congressional agenda as it had in the past, Mr. Flake responded flatly, “No, I don’t.”
More broadly, many Republicans say they blame Mr. Rove for failing to heed warnings that the war was hurting their campaigns, as the president and the vice president continued making the case for it on the stump.
“I would say that brilliant as he is, he was not right,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who counts himself among those who believe that Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation could have helped the party maintain control of the Senate. “I think Rove misread the anger of the American people about Iraq.”
"brilliant as he is" is the usual comment. It’s actually amazing what has happened since 2000. Bush’s election is attributed to Karl Rove’s strategy du jour rather than Bush’s actual performance as a President of the United States. Rove is no longer "brilliant" because even he couldn’t put together enough lies and dirty tricks to reelect the supporters of Mr. Bush, arguably the worst President in our two centuries of having Presidents. We don’t think of Bush as electable in his own right. We think of him as a creation of Rove’s script. This article points out the failure of Rove’s emphasizing the unpopular War in Iraq, and holding on to Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. What was his choice, to ignore the war and fire Rumsfeld early on? That wouldn’t have worked. It would have been an admission that the war was a mistake, or that we were losing, or that Rumsfeld had "cooties." Since all those things were true, Rove was dead in the water.
I certainly don’t want to defend Rove, but he did do his dance – gas prices fell, stocks were up, Saddam got sentenced, James Dobson held his "values voters" conferences, Reverend Louis Sheldon preached constantly. He raised a gajillion dollars and spent it on nasty ads. The Administration operatives stumped constantly. The robocalls were constant. I don’t know what more he could’ve done other than cheat with the voting machines even more than usual. He just couldn’t make his dog hunt anymore. It’s amazing [and tragic] that he kept it up as long as he did given the Cretins he had to work with.
The point remains, however, that we no longer think about George W. Bush as a commodity. We think of Karl Rove as the product. Bush is a sidelight. Without someone pulling the strings, he’s simply a nothing legacy. That’s part of the tragedy here. I think even his supporters knew that. The Neoconservatives who planned the the whole thing are now saying it’s Bush’s fault. The Republicans are saying it’s Rove’s fault. The Christians are blaming the Devil, Bush, and their usual suspects – Liberals and Homosexuals. But, truth is, what’s happening to them was inevitable from the start. It’s time now for this house of cards to come tumbling down – all of it – the Neoconservatives, the Religious bigots, the corruption on K Street, many Republicans, Bush/Cheney/Rove, the Right Wing Media Barrons, Fox News.
The damage they’ve done is way too great to ignore. Like Pastor Ted or Congressman Foley, there are times when it’s just plain over…
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