New Day, Same As The Old Day
It’s Tuesday, but it feels like Monday – it’s still hot, the stock market is still in a tailspin, and the #1 topic is still Karl Rove. You could spend a decade just reading the Rove articles that have appeared over the last 24 hours, but perhaps the one closest to my own thoughts comes from Fred Barnes:
KARL ROVE IS the first to admit it: he’s become a myth, a man from whom political magic is expected. Last fall, for instance, Republicans around the country and even in the White House waited for Rove to devise a campaign strategy that would keep Republicans from losing the House and Senate and George Bush from becoming a lame duck president. But instead of a Rove miracle, Republicans and Bush suffered a terrible defeat.
Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation. He not only is a breathtakingly smart strategist but also a clever tactician. He knows history, understands the moods of the public, and is a visionary on matters of public policy. But he is not a magician.
Political advisers like Rove offer advice, not magic. And Rove’s advice has been very good over the years. He got Bush to run as “a different kind of Republican” in 2000–that is, different from Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. And he made sure that as president, Bush (unlike his father) stayed closed to the conservative base of the Republican party.
Rove’s most impressive achievement was his successful strategy for Bush’s re-election in 2004. It was an outside-in strategy of holding the base and reaching out from it to attract independents, soft Republicans, and conservative Democrats. His assumption–a correct one, in my view–was that the conservative Republican base was closer to the political center in America than was the Democrats’ liberal base.
…Rove’s career demonstrates two things: the important role a strategist can play, and the sharp limits on what even the best of the bunch can accomplish. The press has created a legend about political advisers and consultants, namely that they have the power to win or lose campaigns and in Rove’s case get historic legislation passed. In truth, they don’t.
The most important factor in elections is not who the strategist is. In most races, the quality of the candidate, the partisan landscape, the ideology of the time–those are far more significant factors. Strategists mostly affect campaigns at the margin.
Yet the legend of their capability to achieve much more simply won’t die.
” Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation.”
Wha-huh?! Seriously? Madison? Bismarck? Machiavelli? Bueller?
I think the post mortems on Rove really miss the one elephant (pun intended?) in the room: the war in Iraq. More than anything else, that is the thing that has absolutely destroyed the credibility of this administration. Without it, any number of blunders and idiocies would probably have looked only mildly silly/criminal/stupid. Katrina reconstruction, Gitmo, FISA, the US Attorneys, you name it. These are things that are bad (in my opinion a few of them are downright morally reprehensible), but they appear especially bad in light of the war.
Anyone who doubts the practical value of Rove’s strategy of out-and-out demonization of gays and liberals in 2004 needs to have his head examined. It was a vile and loathsome campaign of mud-slinging and hate, but it worked like a charm. Without a major albatross – like Iraq – I have no doubt that it or some variation will always work. Bullies are always more popular than nerds.
Also on behalf of Rove and Barnes, let’s not forget that the strategy used by the Democrats in 2006 was essentially to grab up candidates who were substantially closer to the conservative GOP base than anything in living memory. Jim Webb IS a Republican, for crying out loud.
Jim Webb is certainly no Republican…I’ve never heard a Republican quote Marx approvingly on economic policy. His populism/socialism disqualifies him unequivocally.
However, you’re right that Barnes was over-effusive in his praise in the section you highlighted…I just liked his overall message better than most ‘after Rove’ think pieces I’ve seen so far…
“It was a vile and loathsome campaign of mud-slinging and hate,”
What a putrid and transparent lie. One more in a string of same. So what was the nature of this “hate”, gasbag? As Kerry said over and over again, his policy on gay marriage was the same as the President’s. So what are you babbling about? Anything? No, nothing but your own demented persecution fantasies. It is you and your ilk who live and breathe hatred. It was Edwards, yes? who burped up that Mary Cheney was gay on national television, drawing in a family member who has either not participated at all in politics or FOR THE OTHER SIDE. And your bloviations on Iraq address not at all the one important question, not whether this was a political gain or loss for any particular party but if this was not the right thing to do, just what was? And who was going to do that? Like on gay marriage, the only time Kerry was ever remotely explicit on his war policy, it was the same as Bush’s, only “better”. Pathetic. Standard. The vile loathesomeness is all on your side, pal. Jerk.
Well. That’s nice and rude. I’m a conservative, as y’all are well aware of, and that’s uncalled for, mega.
I was going to make a joke about Karl Rove being Bush’s brain, but somehow now’s just not the time.
Demonization of homosexuals, and the pushing of state amendments banning gay marriage to get the so-cons to the polls, mega. That’s what Ryan was talking about, at least in part.
I refuse to have a conversation about what Karl Rove and George Bush used the GOP to do to homosexuals with you, megapotamus. I want to make this clear in no uncertain terms: if you support this President and what he did in 2004, you are so beyond the pale of basic human decency that you are not worth my time. The reason Edwards brought up Mary Cheney – which I said was out of line at the time – was to point out exactly the kind of hypocrisy this Republican Party is engaged in. Either Dick Cheney is a monstrous hypocrite or he doesn’t love his own daughter – these are your only options. I think dragging her into the fight is inconsiderate to her and her family, but I also think someone needs to point exactly what kind of moral depths the GOP has plumbed in the last few years. That John Kerry couldn’t take a stronger position is that the GOP is mining a hate that is very real and very widespread among the American people in general.
As far as Jim Webb goes, I think it would be fairly easy to sell him as a certain kind of populist Rust Belt-style Republican – or as a Democrat of the same ilk. He’s essentially Dick Gephardt with a wider streak of social conservatism as far as I can tell. He’s obviously not of either the Barry Goldwater-libertarian or Rick Santorum-hatemongering wing of the party, but I think he fits sensibly with a number of the GOP base’s priorities – see, for instance, immigration and guns, where he is to the right of a lot of Republicans. Also, not to be overly snarky, but the reason you’ve never heard a Republican quote Marx is that the average Republican has never read a book written by someone smarter than Ann Coulter.