A Kewl Karl Kollection

August 14th, 2007

Karl Rove was never a “genius” — he was a frumpy opportunist with a sadistic streak, a “gang member” in every sense of the term. After 9/11, it was clear that the Bushies were every bit the huddled group of nerds and wimps in the schoolyard, plotting childish revenge on those who picked on them … the mastermind for their plan was wee Karl, whose cleverness was based on sucking up to the like-minded, planting little bits of damaging information about those he wished to eliminate and using his platform to run a con-game. Karl yearned for “cool” in the worst way, patently unable to be so himself — consider this quote, remembering his earliest meetings with badboy and presidential tantrum-thrower, George “The Cocksman” Bush:

“I can literally remember what he was wearing,” he said of an occasion in 1973: “an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have.”

Cool; dumb and self-centered, but WOW – was he cool. It was NEVER about the Dubby needing Karl … oh, no boys and girls – Karl needed the Dubby like pocket protectors need a leaky pen. Pragmatic Karl saw how to create his own “cool destiny” — he would become the uncool guy that was indispensable to the cool guy. And that’s exactly what he did. Of course, as the game ratcheted up, Karl’s ability to deliver was challenged … he became more and more ruthless to meet the occasion. He found himself riding high on the power — he became the man selected to make the “Republican” name brand cool for Thirty Years, years that would establish his boss as the icon of conservatism, outdoing even Nixon or Saint Ronnie Reagan … and he took every backroom meeting, used every Mafia-inspired tactic, out-manipulated every slick crony, seized every unexpected opportunity and wrung it dry for power … eventually he believed his own hype, and became as reckless and disdainful as the swaggering narcissist he advised.

Karl’s no genius, he’s an exploiter and a con-man. He ran a game on the public, the conservatives and the Christocrats, and he departs his formal position at the White House leaving them all in shambles. Not all of them have noticed, though, which is the only redemption for Karl … he will still be “used” by the administration and the Neo-Con wing to promote the Smoke ‘n Mirror game he made infamous — which is Karl’s only comfort now, because without power to meddle in, without “cool” to get next to … Karl Rove is exactly what he looks like. A tubby, balding nerd with a bad disposition and an inferiority complex the size of his beloved Texas.

Here’s a collection of the assessments — pointing to some of Karl’s egregious moments, and containing time-lines on his “accomplishments” — and the interesting articles and blogposts, all gathered for posterity and your reading pleasure.

It’s telling that everyone with a lick of sense is both thrilled and wary with this announcement … as we should be. Karl Rove IS the Kool Aid … he won’t disappear until the last Bushie is tossed out — he’ll just leak his vile propaganda in several places at once [if the Congress doesn't nab him, that is.]

If you only have time now for a couple, do open the Youtube to see a young Rove for Nixon [hair, even!] and I favor the two bits of snark by Bob Cesca and Ed Kociela, last.

Jude

Rove / Nixon, Youtube
Check this out: pay attention at 4:00 in … just past puberty, Turd Blossom had already zeroed in on streamlining the vote!

Rove/Bush Timeline, THE Math, and Fond Memories
Trish, PensitoReview
Aug. 13, 2007

The Chicago Tribune put together this handy timeline of the golden years of Karl Rove with the Bushes.

Rover two weeks before the 2006 midterms: “I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I’m entitled to THE math.”

1973 — Rove became chairman of the College Republicans. During his time in Washington, D.C., he became a special assistant to Republican National Committee Chairman George H.W. Bush and met George W. Bush.

1977 — Worked for a political action committee dedicated to making the elder Bush president in 1980.

1978 — Advised younger Bush during his unsuccessful Texas congressional campaign.

1980 — Assisted George H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful presidential campaign.

1994 — Adviser for George W. Bush’s successful Texas gubernatorial campaign.

1998 — Adviser for Gov. Bush’s successful re-election campaign.

2000 — Chief strategist for Bush’s presidential campaign.

2004 — Chief strategist for re-election campaign.

2005 — Currently assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to President George W. Bush.

Individual dates are missing here, such as the dates Rove called Judy Miller with bogus Iraq weapons of mass destruction intelligence, and when he called Bob Novak, Tim Russert, and whoever else with Valerie Plame’s identity, as well as the date he dissed Sheryl Crow over global warming. My favorite is the date Bush got snitty about Turd Blossom after the disastrous 2006 midterm elections.

“I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was,” said Bush.

Good times.

But Bush couldn’t be blamed for being pissed at Rover, whose inability to tell which way the wind was blowing led directly to the “good thumpin’” Bush had to take.

Two weeks before the election, Rove showed the world how he reacts when someone disagrees with his interpretation of the facts, and why he is so detested by nice people everywhere. His interview with the polite Robert Seigel on NPR, when it was really looking good for the Democrats, said it all.

SIEGEL: We are in the home stretch though and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about…

ROVE: Not that you would exhibit a bias, you just making a comment.

SIEGEL: I’m looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.

ROVE: No, you are not. I’m looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.

SIEGEL: I don’t want to have you to call races…

ROVE: I’m looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I’m entitled to THE math.

SIEGEL: I don’t know if we’re entitled to a different math but your…

ROVE: I said THE math.

What an asswipe.

Rove’s Dismal Legacy
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
Monday, August 13, 2007

[open for links to Froomkin articles by date]

Karl Rove’s legacy will not be what he wanted it to be.

The political guru who made President Bush what he is today had hoped to leave behind a permanent Republican ruling majority. Instead, his tenure will stand as an example of how divisiveness and partisanship are not conducive to successful governance.

After years of being lauded as a political genius, Rove nevertheless leaves his party in worse shape than he found it, with his boss profoundly discredited in the eyes of the American people.

When historians look back at Bush’s squandered opportunity to unite the country and even the world behind a shared agenda after 9/11, part of the blame will go to Vice President Cheney and the decision to invade Iraq. But part will accrue to Rove for choosing to use national security as a wedge issue.

The Rove Archives

Rove has of course been a key figure in this column ever since it was launched in January 2004. Here are some highlights from Bush’s second term.

Back on Feb. 9, 2005, I noted Bush’s decision to give Rove a new title: Deputy chief of staff for policy. Or, as I wrote: “Karl Rove is now, officially, in charge of pretty much everything at the White House. But it’s mostly just a title change. . . .

“Rove was already officially in charge of strategic planning, political affairs, liaison to outside groups and intergovernmental affairs. Now he’ll also be in charge of coordinating the policies of the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council and the Homeland Security Council.”

On June 23, 2005, I wrote about how Rove had become one of the first members of the administration to suggest openly that liberals sympathize with the enemy and are intent on endangering American troops.

On Sept. 15, 2005, I noted that Bush had put Rove in charge of the post-Katrina reconstruction efforts.

And not coincidentally, I wrote on April 20, 2006, that Rove had now lost his official policy portfolio, in what seemed like a rare de facto admission that political goals and competence were possibly in conflict.

On May 18, 2006, I noted that “White House political guru Karl Rove’s chirpy optimism is meeting with more than a little skepticism these days, whether it’s his insistence that President Bush’s dismal approval ratings simply reflect a public ’sour on the war,’ or his assurance to House Republicans that Bush’s immigration plan is a political winner.”

On Oct. 26, 2005, and again on April 28, 2006, I wrote about Rove’s furious attempts to wriggle off special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s hook — including a startling fifth appearance before grand jurors investigating the leak of Plame’s identity.

On June 13, 2006, I observed that Rove had successfully avoided criminal charges in the CIA leak investigation. But just because Rove wasn’t charged with a crime doesn’t mean his conduct meets the standards the public expects from its White House.

On June 22, 2006, I wrote about how Rove was demanding that Republican candidates not distance themselves from Bush’s Iraq policy, saying that doing so would be politically suicide.

And then, on Nov. 13, 2006, just days after the elections, I wrote about Rove’s epitaphs were suddenly being rewritten. “Rove’s divide-and-conquer political strategy, his insistence that Republican candidates embrace the war in Iraq as a campaign issue, his supremely self-assured predictions of victory — all were proven deeply, even delusionally wrong last week.”

On March 9, 2007, I noted how “Denis Collins, a juror in the Scooter Libby trial, wasn’t just channeling his fellow jurors on Tuesday when he faced the microphones and asked: ‘Where’s Rove?’

“Collins’s point was that Libby, who he had just helped convict on obstruction-of-justice charges, was quite obviously not the only person involved in the politically motivated outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.”

And once it emerged that several U.S. attorneys had been fired last year, potentially for being insufficiently partisan in their enforcement decisions, I wrote about how suspicion quickly turned to Rove.

On March 12 I wrote: “When it comes to Republican political shenanigans, Karl Rove is often the most likely suspect.”

On March 23 I explained: “Why are President Bush’s Democratic critics so focused on getting White House political guru Karl Rove’s testimony regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys?

“Because based on Rove’s history, the whole thing may well have been his idea — and may be even more complicated than it initially appeared.”

On May 4 I took note of an emergency meeting at the White House where Rove gave top Justice Department officials marching orders that, depending on what you believe, either instructed them to tell the whole truth or to cover up his own involvement.

I wrote on Aug. 2 about how the White House is maintaining that Rove has absolute immunity from congressional oversight.

Rove leaves more second-term blues for White House
John Whitesides, Reuters
Mon Aug 13, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The resignation of Karl Rove, architect of President George W. Bush’s election triumphs and a crucial behind-the-scenes policy guru, is the latest sign of the White House’s diminished agenda and shattered dreams of a Republican super-majority, analysts said.

Rove, the last and most prominent of Bush’s inner circle of Texas advisers to quit the administration, leaves a lame-duck president suffering from low approval ratings, an unpopular war in Iraq and public rejection in the 2006 elections.

With Democrats in control of Congress and brimming with optimism about the 2008 White House race, Rove’s talk of a lasting and historic shift to Republican dominance seems long ago.

“This closes the chapter where George Bush and Karl Rove thought they were building a new Republican majority that would last a generation. That is clearly off the table,” said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Bush’s top domestic priorities — overhauls of Social Security and immigration — are dead in Congress, leaving the administration scrambling in its final 17 months to save his first-term tax cuts, blunt Democratic spending priorities and salvage the war in Iraq.

“At this point all they are trying to do is save some of the signature items from their first term and hand off the war in Iraq to the next guy in better shape than it looks today,” Jillson said.

Rove, known as “Bush’s brain” by foes but nicknamed “boy genius” by the president, said on Monday he will leave the White House at the end of the month to return to Texas with his family.

His departure leaves a huge void in a White House where his influence was matched only by Vice President Dick Cheney, and where since the 2004 election he had filled multiple policy roles as deputy chief of staff.

“Rove is the guy who wove all the policy and political threads through the needle. Now you’re talking about a small committee to just duplicate the expertise and perspective he brought,” said Bruce Buchanan, a political analyst at the University of Texas.

BUSH ISOLATED

He said Rove’s departure, along with the recent resignation of adviser and longtime Bush aide Dan Bartlett, would leave Bush increasingly isolated in the White House.

“There is nobody left with that kind of relationship with Bush and that closeness,” he said, adding that might explain a recent increase in Bush’s visits with his father, the former president.

But White House spokesman Tony Snow said Rove’s resignation was not a sign the administration was starting to count down the days to the end on January 20, 2009.

“If you take a look, the president’s got a pretty aggressive domestic agenda and there’s a lot of stuff to be done on foreign policy,” Snow said. “As the president has said many times, he’s going to sprint to the tape.”

Analysts said Bush’s declining political fortunes and the Democratic win in 2006 had proved the flaws in Rove’s political strategy, implemented after the September 11 attacks, of focusing on pleasing the Republican Party’s conservative base.

“The idea you could govern by appealing to the Republican base was simply wrong,” Jillson said. “The independents drifted away until all they had was the base.”

Rove told reporters traveling to Texas with the president he viewed November’s election results as a temporary setback for Republicans. He said he would not take an “official” role with any 2008 Republican presidential campaign, but left the door open for an unofficial consulting position.

Democrats, happy to see Rove go, condemned him for increasing political partisanship and divisiveness in Washington.

“Goodbye, good riddance,” Democratic presidential contender John Edwards said in a statement.

Congress must pursue Rove investigation: New York Times
Raw Story
Tuesday August 14, 2007

A leading US newspaper called on Congress Tuesday to pursue its investigation of departing White House adviser Karl Rove, whom it accused of pursuing a ruthless brand of politics as “blood sport.”

“By getting out of town he is … hoping to avoid spending any time at all with congressional investigators,” the influential New York Times wrote.

“Congress needs to use all its power to bring Mr. Rove back to Washington to testify — in public and under oath — about how he used his office to put politics above the interests of the American people,” the Times’ editors wrote.

“The American public needs to understand the full story of how this White House — with Mr. Rove pulling many of the strings — has spent the last six and a half years improperly and dangerously politicizing the federal government.”

Rove, President George W. Bush’s top strategist, architect of his two successful White House bids and a towering figure on the US political scene, announced Monday that he was resigning his White House post by the end of the month.

The Times wrote that Rove should be made to answer a congressional subpoena about the scandal surrounding the firings of several US federal prosecutors, and other efforts to politicize government in Washington.

“President Bush took a risk when he put someone so focused on politics as blood sport at the center of his White House. Once he did, he had an obligation to ensure that Mr. Rove understood that his job was to promote the interests of the American people — not solely the Republican Party,” the daily declared.

The daily trumpeted that despite Rove’s plans to install a permanent Republican majority in the US government “both houses of Congress are back in Democratic hands, Mr. Bush’s approval ratings are around 30 percent and many Republican presidential candidates are running as fast as they can away from the Bush legacy.”

Meanwhile, another top newspaper, the Washington Post, while also critical of Rove’s legacy, was less scathing.

“He should be judged on his own terms — as the would-be architect of a long-lasting Republican majority,” the newspaper opined.

“If the manufactured polarization of the Bush-Rove years did not even serve its ostensible purpose, then what was the good of it?” the Post editors wrote.

Hey Karl! Would A More Honest Reason For Leaving Kill You?
Kathleen Reardon, HuffPo
Mon Aug 13

Aren’t you nearly nauseous about this “spending more time with my family” reason for leaving public office? Were these guys oblivious to their families before? Isn’t theirs the family values party? Karl Rove’s son is at college. At that age they usually want you to keep a distance. Yet, according to Rove he’d stay at the White House but “I’ve got to leave for the sake of my family.”

It’s insulting, really. And unfair to people who really do need to leave a job they love to “be there” for their families. It’s gratuitous.

Then there’s the implication that he might have stayed but Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten advised senior aides that after Labor Day they’d be obliged to remain until George Bush leaves office. That’s iron clad like the rule about wearing white after Labor Day. Where did that come from? For years I wondered what awful thing would happen if that rule were broken. Stuck in social hell no doubt, ignored by all who’d taken note of such an important style date. Apparently after Labor Day you’re in or you’re out at The White House no matter how much of a big shot you are.

You get the impression that Karl Rove, long-term friend and confidant of the president, the “architect” of his acquisition of the White House was mulling about in a room with a lot of aides, expecting to continue in his job, when Bolten unexpectedly walked in and lowered the boom. Karl Rove, shocked and dismayed, nervously paced about as “My God! Do I leave or don’t I?” tumbled mercilessly about in his traumatized brain. “Was this an indirect message from the president cutting me loose?” He must have broken out in a cold sweat. His time had come without even a discussion with the Commander-in-Chief. Sure, that all happened!

The fictions never end. They have to think we’re stupid. That’s the only explanation. I’m with Doris Kearns Goodwin. Let’s look long and hard at the history of current presidential candidates and find ourselves an honest one - someone who gives us some credit for intelligence.

I hope Lewis Black does a Daily Show segment on Rove’s traumatic, supposedly blind-sided departure. It’d be hysterically disparaging. Exactly what Rove and this duplicitous White House deserve.

Karl Rove: the brain that fell in with the Bushes
Fred Attewill and Julian Borger, Guardian Unlimited
Monday August 13, 2007

Described by his boss as the Boy Genius, the Architect and even Turd Blossom, after a Texan flower that grows on cattle dung, Karl Rove is credited with masterminding all George Bush’s election victories since the early 1990s.

Before they met, the future president was just a genial, very well connected fellow from a famous family. Mr Rove, the hard-nosed political geek who can reel off 20-year-old election results from obscure congressional districts, turned the callow pretender into a candidate, then a governor, then a president.

At the same time, he brought the Republican party lasting dominance by bringing Protestant evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics together under the amorphous banner of “moral values” through their shared antipathy to abortion.

He himself became one of the most powerful men in the Bush administration, challenging the vice-president, Dick Cheney, for influence.

He will be remembered for, among other things, a cringe-inducing dance to a hip hop tune in front of hundreds of journalists at the annual dinner for TV and radio correspondents in Washington in March.

Long before this humiliation, however, the shine had come off Mr Rove’s political career.

His entire raison d’etre - winning elections for the Republicans - was called into question last year when he failed to stop the Democrats seizing control of both houses of Congress.

His credibility was also tarnished when the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, sacked eight federal prosecutors in a move the Democrats maintain was politically motivated.

Mr Gonzales admitted he had had conversations on at least two occasions with Mr Rove about the sacking of a prosecutor in New Mexico, but Mr Bush used his executive privilege to prevent Mr Rove from testifying at investigative hearings on Capitol Hill.

The black clouds were already starting to gather over Mr Rove at the zenith of his political career in 2005, even as a grateful Mr Bush put him in charge of White House policy after his second presidential election victory.

Mr Rove had long insisted he was not responsible for the leaking of the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative named by journalist Robert Novak in 2003.

The piece led to a three-year investigation, a 30-month jail sentence for the vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby and a damaging scandal.

Evidence from another journalist, Time’s Matthew Cooper, suggested Mr Rove had let the information slip during a phone conversation, but Mr Rove was never prosecuted over the case.

However, suggestions of his involvement soured the atmosphere at the White House after the administration repeatedly denied his involvement, even deriding the claims as “ridiculous”.

The depth of support from the White House was testament to the extraordinary closeness of Mr Rove’s partnership with Mr Bush, which was unparalleled in US political history. He was even been dubbed the Richelieu of the White House (after the cardinal who advised Louis XIII).

According to a Rove biography, cheekily entitled Bush’s Brain, he was once asked when he started thinking about presidential campaigns. He replied: “December 25 1950″. That was the day of his birth, in Denver, Colorado.

Throughout the1960s, the young Rove was the perfect Republican, going to school each day in jacket, tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, carrying a briefcase. He later described himself as a “big nerd”. But he was a nerd who got even.

Hired by George Bush senior aged just 22, he started a lifelong association with the family.

One of his menial jobs was to hand over the Bush car keys whenever George junior went to Washington. Mr Rove’s description sounds like the start of a love affair. “I can literally remember what he was wearing,” he said of an occasion in 1973: “an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have.”

A Humpty’s Fall
Picking up Rove’s pieces
Harkavy, Village Voice
August 13, 2007
[fun graphic here!]

Yo, what a humpty!

Now that Karl Rove is leaving, who’s going to whisper instructions in George W. Bush’s ear?

Rove’s string-pulling of the puppet POTUS was never summed up better than in an episode revealed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who resigned in early 2003 and dumped a truckload of notes on Ron Suskind, who produced the invaluable book The Price of Loyalty.

As I noted in July 2005, O’Neill recalled an instance in which Bush actually displayed compassion toward the middle class, at the expense of the wealthy, but was talked out of it by Rove.

A book-promotion conversation between Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes and Suskind in early 2004 tells the tale. Here’s the transcript, posted by the excellent Canadian site Centre for Research on Globalization:

STAHL: (Voiceover) Suskind, who was given a nearly verbatim transcript by someone who attended the [November 2002] meeting, says everyone expected Mr. Bush to rubber-stamp the plan under discussion, a big new tax cut. But according to Suskind, the president was, perhaps, having second thoughts about cutting taxes again and was uncharacteristically engaged.

SUSKIND: He asks, “Haven’t we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut’s going to do it again.”

STAHL: The president himself says, “But we already gave it to the rich people?”

SUSKIND: Yes, he says…

STAHL: “Why are we going to do it again?”

SUSKIND: … “Did we already—why are we doing it again? Why are we doing it again?” Now, his advisers, they say, “Well, Mr. President, the upper class, they’re the entrepreneurs.” That’s the standard response. And the president kind of goes, OK, that’s their response. And then he comes back to it again. “Well, shouldn’t we be giving money to the middle? Won’t people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice and what was it good for?’ ”

(Footage of Suskind; photo of Bush and Karl Rove)

STAHL: (Voiceover) But according to the transcript, White House political adviser Karl Rove jumped in.

SUSKIND: Karl Rove is saying to the president a kind of mantra, “Stick to principle. Stick to principle.” And he says it over and over again.

STAHL: And he’s saying, “Stick and don’t waver.”

SUSKIND: “Don’t waver.”

(Footage of Suskind and reporter talking; O’Neill)

STAHL: (Voiceover) In the end, the president didn’t. And nine days after that meeting in which O’Neill made it clear he could not publicly support another tax cut, the vice president called and asked him to resign.

Notice that Rove sealed O’Neill’s fate and Dick Cheney fired O’Neill. Further evidence that Bush is no more than a front man. As if we didn’t already know that.

Karl Rove biographer: ‘This is the end of the Bush presidency’
David Edwards and Muriel Kane, Raw Story
Monday August 13, 2007

Goodbye, ‘Boy Genius’
Eugene Robinson, WaPo
Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Karl Rove Is No Genius, He’s a Failure
Rove didn’t just break the Republican Party. Rove also leaves behind a broken president, a broken army, a slew of broken laws and a broke country.
Cenk Uygur, Alternet
August 14, 2007

In the end, Karl Rove was wrong. Dramatically wrong. Running to the base worked in the short term, but might have killed the Republican Party in the long term. If there is going to be any permanent majority, it’s going to be the Democrats, not the Republicans.

And who do the Republicans have to thank for that? Karl Rove. When asked about Rove’s departure, John Edwards said, “Goodbye, good riddance.” He might as well have been speaking for the whole Republican Party.

A permanent 51% majority? That is an idea so devoid of logic, it is amazing that anyone ever took it seriously. Even if you believed its underlying premise - which you definitely shouldn’t have - the smallest demographic shift would undermine this “brilliant” strategy. There is nothing permanent about 51% in politics.

Rove was always so optimistic about elections, including 2006. Part of the reason for this was because he knew the fix was in. He knew that his minions had worked hard to cage voters, to give less voting machines to heavily Democratic districts, contested minority voters and done every little dirty trick in the book. And to be fair, they also worked hard to turn out their Christian army of voters. The kind who don’t question their candidates and vote like robots for anyone their pre-paid preacher tells them to.

So, Rove figured that Republicans would win any close election. But what he didn’t figure on is non-close elections. And that if you drive hard enough toward your base, then you won’t have any more close elections. He thought there would be no price to pay for appealing only to the most conservative, narrow-minded, theocratic, xenophobic and militaristic people in the country. He was wrong.

Thanks to Rove the Republicans have lost the middle. And they have lost it for a long time to come. This will do untold damage to the Republican Party. So, there is great irony that the man Democrats loved to hate will come to be known as the scourge of the Republican Party.

But Rove didn’t just break the Republican Party. Rove also leaves behind a broken president, a broken army, a slew of broken laws and a broke country. He spent heavily in districts and programs that he thought would help Republicans. He spent up the good will of the US abroad and Republicans at home. He’s like the unscrupulous captain of a sinking ship getting off the boat before it goes under and takes everyone else down with it.

Now Bush is left on the boat without his brain, without any political capital and without any supporters. Plus, he has a madman roaming the decks looking to spear another Middle Eastern country loaded with oil. If Dick “Captain Ahab” Cheney is the only one steering the ship now, God help us all. Because there is some chance it might even get worse.

But politically speaking, if the Democrats had any sense, they’d be sending Rove parting gifts. Thanks for the memories. The only thing better than Rove leaving the White House would be for him to work for one of the leading Republican contenders. Please, please run another campaign where you try to appeal to only the Republican base. See how that works out for you and your “permanent majority.”

Karl Rove, by What Measure Genius?
Marc Ash, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 14 August 2007

I never thought Karl Rove was a genius. Rove is not brilliant; he’s ruthless. There is a difference. What makes Rove dangerous is he will take risks no one else will take. Risks are like straws on a camel’s back: one too many and you and the camel are undone.

I was an avid observer of Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. I even helped out a bit with web page maintenance during the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. Rove and the full weight of corporate America and Jeb Bush and Ralph Nader threw everything they had at Gore. Gore won. He beat them all. I really respected him for that. In the end, after Gore had won in Florida, after the Florida Supreme court ruled the votes had to be recounted, then the five republican members of the US Supreme court actually intervened and shut the vote count down, and made Bush President. And everyone thought Rove was a genius.

I remember on September 10, 2001, NEWSWEEK ran a headline that read, “The Secret Vote that Made George W. Bush President”. Bush’s public approval rating was at 42 percent and falling. I forget what the article was about. The next day Osama bin Laden flew two commercial airliners filled with passengers into the World Trade Towers in Lower Manhattan, another into the Pentagon and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania. Once the smoke had cleared, Bush cautiously returned to Washington, and suddenly he was a hero. And everyone thought Rove was a genius.

In 2004 the Bush campaign message was, “if you vote for John Kerry and the Democrats you are putting the country in danger … it will help Osama bin Laden.” And four days before the election, bin Laden released a video warning the American people they were not safe. On election day, the African-American voters in Ohio thought they could make a difference. That was before Katrina, before New Orleans and its people were left to die. Bush held possession of the White House. And everyone thought Rove was a genius.

Rove will not speak to Congress. If he cannot lie to Congress, and he cannot tell the truth to Congress, then he must remain silent. Even for a man who achieved all by taking risks, the risk is too great. Congress might ask if Rove directed US attorneys to use the power of the Justice department to strike back at or simply strike political opponents of the White House. And what would he say? What would a genius say?

The news broke today that Rove is retiring, and all the best publications said he was the Architect of the Republican domination. But they haven’t asked the Republicans. The Republicans are scared and they’re angry. They think their party is badly damaged. Perhaps they are right. So whom has Karl Rove helped? How long will it be before his friends understand what he has done? What will they do then?

I’ve always thought the geniuses were the quiet revolutionaries. The ones who changed things, but no one noticed. Did Rove change things, or just exploit what he found? There are better and brighter men and women than Karl Rove close at hand. The genius is hearing them.

Frog March Dreams
Barry Yourgrau, Brain Flakes via Smirking Chimp
Aug 14 2007

That sweet dream of Karl Rove being frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs won’t be coming to pass after all, it seems. Not unless something truly celestial happens before the end of the month.

But maybe it will be a dream only deferred, to another location? Fingers crossed for the various Congressional investigations in progress.

Can I add my little strident note to the general catcalls, hisses, and purple-faced rancor at this disgusting figure passing from the Executive scene? Thanks, let me clear my throat and work up a big moist plug.

The Rovian “political genius” was a toxic mash of fraud, chicanery, hypocrisy, shamelessness, and for want of a better word, brutality, brewed to Orwellian strength. Rove was a chief architect in dismantling a sense of public political reality in America. He ran campaigns designed to obscure and confuse, by means of fabrication and the scummiest slander. He was instrumental in hijacking government as a partisan political apparatus, on a scale never previously seen in American history. (Come on, Congressional investigations!)

This is an Administration that represents not the country as a whole but only its partisans–a government for Republicans: the wealthy and their duped demented foot soldiers. (Hearkening back, I believe, to a Pat Buchanan suggestion during Nixon days, “Let’s smash the country to apart, we’ll get the biggest piece.”) Rove helped usher the monstrosity of right-wing evangelism to front and center in the political arena, as an entirely cynical neo-Machiavellian tactic . (During Rove’s formal policy tenure at the White House, his lone foreign advisor was Michael Ledeen, a rightwing Machiavelli scholar.) He sold war and militarism as a blackjack to wallop up partisan political power.

Commentators fault Rove for being brilliant at winning campaigns but neglecting the art of governing. But for Rove, I believe, winning itself, brutally and devastatingly, takes care of the issues of governance. Hobble em and scare em, keep a whip in hand and the fat cats happy and the fanatics teased, that’s the formula for governance. Meaning there is no governance anymore, only the continuous whipping up of power. It’s a variant of Orwell’s idea of the use of perpetual war in 1984. It melds together the disparate agendas that drive the Bush administration.

Rove’s chum and mentor was of course Lee Atwater, Bush senior’s campaign strategist/slimemeister, who helped bring the world the Willie Horton tactic. (And who, on his early death bed–from brain cancer–pleaded for forgiveness for his political ways, among others.) The Bushes have their traditions, don’t they.

Rove has a boy in college, I understand. I’m sure the Army could find a place for the son of the man who chaired the secretive White House group that sold America the Iraq war.

Rove got all quivery-voiced in his farewell little speech, the one invoking the Lord mucho (though he’s not a believer) and the call of time-with-the-family. It reminded me of another quivery-voice au revoir speech, also invoking the call of family time–George Tenet’s, when he departed the CIA. Yes, real caring family men, these warmongers and warmonger-enablers.

“I can literally remember what he was wearing,” Rove said of meeting George W. in 1973: “an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have.” This from a White House so politically hostile to gays, but privately welcoming of funsters like Jeff Gannon.

If there are any special places in circles of hell reserved for catastrophic hypocrites and malignant cynics, I’d like to book a seat for Karl.

He’s deeply responsible for a Republican government of which the 68 year old former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan just wrote:

“The Bush regime is the most irresponsibly aggressive regime the world has seen since Hitler’s.

If only a sweet young thing would volunteer to give Bush a b—-b so that he can be impeached before he leads us to Armageddon.”

The hyphens in the previous sentence are mine, not the writer’s.

Karl Rove Out There Walking The Streets
Bob Cesca, HuffPo
August 13, 2007

Whenever we talk about criminals, we traditionally worry that somehow they’ll slip through the cracks and end up “out there walking the streets.” No-one wants the freakdogs of society out there walking around on our goddamn socialized streets.

But there he goes anyway… Karl Rove, the second most infamous villain of our time, leaving the White House at the end of the month.

And then what?

He’ll be out there walking the streets.

Personally, I’d rather have Karl Rove in the White House where he’s preoccupied by this uproariously laughable effort to make the Bush administration sound capable and popular.

One of the more recent and ridiculous lines he probably wrote for the president, “If they’re still analyzing the presidency of George Washington — presidents shouldn’t worry about the history,” is testimony to his efficacy in his present gig.

Coming up with hilariously illogical lines like that, no wonder he doesn’t have time for anything else, including his — huh-what? Wife? He has a wife? Who knew that? Has anyone checked the back of the photo on Rove’s desk to make sure it wasn’t cut out of a magazine? Here’s a sure-fire way to tell if she’s real or not: has he employed that yarn about his mysterious wife being Canadian, and that they met at Niagara Falls? Check it out.

But there’s no telling what Karl Rove will do now that he’s soon to be out there walking the streets. Out there — with the rest of us. With your kids! Bored and thirsty for some action. Beads of anxious sweat forming around his one hair and rolling down his bulbous forehead. Eyes scanning left and right — watching, waiting for someone to totally ratfuck.

A poet once wrote, “You can take the boy out of ratfucking, but you can’t take the ratfucking out of the boy.” So true.

Karl Rove is one of those legendary mythological creatures: half doughy man-boy, half ratfucker. It’s his nature. Once a ratfucker, always a ratfucker. Remove the Bush White House from the equation and he’ll be ratfucking all over the place. Ratfucking in the private sector. Ratfucking at the mall. Ratfucking in the self-checkout aisle at the grocery store. Seriously, have you considered what he can accomplish with those touch-screen checkout computers? He’ll go in for a box of corn dogs and walk out as the owner of the franchise, and you’ll be the one under investigation for shoplifting corn dogs.

Karl Rove… out there walking the streets. Lock your doors and check the ethnicity of your illegitimate children. That’s right, Mr. Wealthy Future Next-Door-Neighbor of Karl Rove, one day, when you least expect it, you’ll open your golf club newsletter and read all about your brand new illegitimate black baby. Your wife could be outted to Matt Cooper as half-Mexican. All so Karl Rove can hork that extra 1,000-square-foot easement on your property to build his whites-only hip-hop recording studio.

And oh yes, he’ll try to get the rest of us, too, one way or another. Maybe he’ll consult with the oil or tobacco industry. Suddenly Fox News Channel reports: “Oil And Tobacco! Awesome Salad Dressing?” Steve Doocy reports, “Why do Democrats hate oil which is from dinosaurs? I thought the Democrats believed in evolution! Isn’t that weird?” Karl Rove: World’s Greatest Lobbyist! Aw man, hell no.

So I’m not savoring the resignation of Karl Rove. But I do feel comforted by the fact that history will peg him as the nation’s most powerful ratfucker. History will write that Karl Rove was a man who politicized 9/11; helped to take us to war in Iraq so his boss could be re-elected; a man who helped to violate national security in order to settle a political vendetta; and a man whose nickname verified that our 43rd president has uttered the fecal euphemism “turd” hundreds of times.

And now he’s out there walking the streets.

Bring us the head of Karl Rove
Ed Kociela, Smirking Chimp
Aug 14 2007

Squeal, piggies, squeal!

And, at least one of them did.

The porcine puppet of the perverted presidency, Rush Limbaugh, was in full-tilt tremors Monday after Karl Rove announced his resignation.

He was defending, of course, the porker who fed at the public trough as George Bush’s braintrust, acting as if liberals wanted Rove’s head brought to them on a stick.

Damn right we did!

And, maybe now, we’ll get it as Rove moves away from his protected position within the administration, leaving the hapless idiot in the White House to his own and Dick Cheney’s devices.

No Scooter.

No Rummy.

No Ashcroft.

No Rove.

No hope for avoiding the blame because there’s nobody left to pile this stack of pig shit on but George and Dick as this nation’s Orwellian nightmare continues.

Now all we need is for Cheney to pull out of Washington, D.C. and head home to Wyoming with a bad heart and the little creep in the White House will only have Condoleezza Rice left to provide succor and Alberto Gonzalez to deflect attention.

Unfortunately, even though the weasels are sneaking out the back door, the damage is already done.

Bush has maintained for some time now that the jury is still out on his presidency and will be for some time, just as it is on George Washington.

That’s partially correct. Washington? I don’t know many — if any — who question his presidency.

Bush? Well, the jury’s out because it’s still puking its guts out after the evidence of more than six years of abuse, lies and a squash-brained leader who makes Dan Quayle look like president of Mensa.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves