Karl Rove Leaving the White House (WSJ)

Unfortunately true -- I did want to write the epitaph to this whole debacle but we'll probably all be dead by that time.

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Whats funny is that you guys have been trying to get him since 2001 and have failed at every try.

Now you think he will be easier to get?
Somehow I dont think he will be.

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I'm guessing that bush supporters are proud of the fact that karl made his mark with the campaign against Ann Richards by implying that Richards staff was comprised of lesbians. Of course it was only an implication there were never any facts involved.

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It's get or be gotten, MM.

His object all along has been to create a one party rule for this country. Unfortunately he picked a party which professes to believe that government is not part of the problem it is the problem and now that he has gotten them elected both he and they have found out that they are not capable of running a government.

Or a war, or hurricane disaster relief, or the Veteran's Administration Hospitals or the National Park Service or the Department of Justice or

ah well...

Joe(we be gotten)Nation

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dyslexia wrote:

I'm guessing that bush supporters are proud of the fact that karl made his mark with the campaign against Ann Richards by implying that Richards staff was comprised of lesbians. Of course it was only an implication there were never any facts involved.

The fact that she was a grandmother and a heterosexual provided her a false sense of security.

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Karl's next project will be to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of this presidency.

I wonder if he understands yet that it does no good if a party gains power but is controlled by incompetents.

Joe(or he may know that, but not care)Nation

Oh, and they can't run foreign policy or energy policy worth a damn either.

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My guess is he needs time to work with the republican candidate for president. Makes sense, since Bush can't run so why is Rove there now? Guess they figure he'll do more good for the party working on the 08 election.

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dyslexia wrote:

dyslexia wrote:
I'm guessing that bush supporters are proud of the fact that karl made his mark with the campaign against Ann Richards by implying that Richards staff was comprised of lesbians. Of course it was only an implication there were never any facts involved.

The fact that she was a grandmother and a heterosexual provided her a false sense of security.

Indeed.

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dyslexia wrote:

dyslexia wrote:
I'm guessing that bush supporters are proud of the fact that karl made his mark with the campaign against Ann Richards by implying that Richards staff was comprised of lesbians. Of course it was only an implication there were never any facts involved.

The fact that she was a grandmother and a heterosexual provided her a false sense of security.

Very good.

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Karl Rove
Karl Rove is an ideologue who cared only about transforming the Republican Party into a permanent majority party. He used "slash and burn" tactics to divide the country and to destroy the Democratic Party. Being a Republican chauvinist, he doesn't care about the country, only his Party.

He chose George W. Bush as both a governor and president candidate because he believed Bush had charisma. He didn't care about competence. He only cared about finding a candidate who could win elections. He didn't care if Bush could competently govern the country.

Karl Rove reminds me of Yasser Arafat, who was a successful terrorist but didn't know how to govern when he gained power. As a result, he destroyed the State he strove to create.

Karl Rove has done the same thing. He has damaged the Republican Party for years to come. He has weakened our country, our world reputation and our economic security. He used fear tactics against our citizens to garner votes. He divided our country when we must come together to defeat terrorism tactics used against us and others.

Karl Rove is not alone in this destruction. It was Bush, Cheney and the Neocons who created the insane policies we've suffered. Karl Rove was just the con-man enabler who sold the insanity to the public. It was the Religious Right Republican Base who, like sheep, gave these idiots the power to impose their will on our country.

Enjoy your retirement, Karl Rove, as you make lots of money and write a book selling your myths about the Bush presidency and your handiwork. Your reputation will go down in infamy.

BBB

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Washington, but not Bush, is losing the ultimate sleazeball. He will certainly continue as a principal advisor to Bush.

Garbage man
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on August 13, 2007 - 9:08pm.
I've been doing a lot of radio interviews on Rove today, and have been converging on a simple point: this man is the direct link between Watergate and W. There's really no two ways around it.

Let's review. Rove got his start in national politics when, as a hotshot College Republican, he went to work defeating the Democratic candidate for state treasurer in Illinois, Al Dixon. He posed as a Dixon volunteer under a false name. Stole the campaign stationary. Ginned up 1,000 invitations to the opening reception for Dixon headquarters promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" and distributed them where Chicago's hippies and drunken hobos congregated.

This is what it took?-what a party!?-to get him noticed by the Republicans in Washington.

In 1972 he got a job working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President's Youth Division. Which sounds pretty innocent. But the youth division, run by a guy named Ken Rietz, was actually the wheelhouse for infiltrating the Edmund Muskie campaign. (An aside: Rietz is a top advisor to Fred Thompson's imminent presidential campaign. There are whispers that Thompson might become Karl Rove's next candidate. And as we know now, Fred Thompson served as the Nixon White House's spy with the Watergate prosecution.)

In 1973 the Republican National Committee hired the Young Master at $9,200 per year ($43,000 in today's money) to give seminars that included lessons in political dirty tricks. At one, he was recorded giving lessons on how to root through an opponent's garbage. (When I went on with conservative talk show host Lars Larson tonight, his response was, "What's wrong with that?" What a party.)

The RNC head who hired him was George H.W. Bush. Fast friends he became with the Bush family, especially their fake-cowboy son George Jr. Onwards and upwards with the Bush family and the Republican Party. Which has since made rooting around in the nation's garbage our national policy.
--tompaine.com

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Neocon Bill Kristol: Rove's departure 'odd' and puzzling David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday August 14, 2007

Neoconservative Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, appeared on Fox News Monday to express his surprise at the sudden departure of Karl Rove from the White House, scheduled for the end of August.

"September's going to be an important month," said Kristol. "General Petraeus comes back to report on the surge, huge fight in Congress, big budget fight. ... I would not have been surprised if he had announced that he was going to leave around Thanksgiving ... but September's an awfully crucial month for the Bush legacy. ... I and a lot of other people in Washington are puzzled as to why he would leave now."

Although denying any insider knowledge of the circumstances, Kristol did proceed to toss out a series of speculations: "Maybe he just, you know, was worn out. ... He does have a lot of legal challenges. ... Maybe there's something we don't know about that will come out soon. ... Maybe they just decided he was becoming a burden. ... Maybe they have a sense that in September, with General Petraeus coming up, they want to sort of remove some of that old partisan baggage, try to reach out to some Democrats."

"It is odd," Kristol acknowledged. "If I were President Bush, going into the biggest fight, arguably, of my presidency in September ... I think I would want Karl Rove with me in the West Wing."

"I'm stunned you didn't know," host Shepard Smith told Kristol. "That tells me there's something else going on here. Is that fair?"

"Could be. Could be," Kristol answered, telling Smith that "they were interviewing people for jobs, Karl was, jobs on his staff, as recently as two or three weeks ago. So either he was keeping his cards awfully close to his chest, or he made this decision pretty recently."

The following video is from Fox's Studio B, broadcast on August 13.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bill_Kristol_puzzled_by_timing_of_0814.html

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Bush's brain is leaving. Thus, we will be left with the lame brain.

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Blueflame
English language is at best from this guy who had aired his views about the person of this thread.

"But of course, for all the media oxygen it has consumed -- and will continue to consume -- Rove's departure is small potatoes. Despite his vaunted "genius" for political skulduggery, in the end Rove too is a drab factotum, a bagman, a greasy cog in a vast machine that will keep grinding on, killing and corrupting, without him. (Assuming that Rove is actually stepping away from the machine, which is most unlikely.) Stories of far greater significance than the slinking exit of a dirt-smeared toady have appeared in the last two days -- items far more revelatory of the hellish world that the porcine minion has helped make on behalf of his masters.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/

"Let the passions and bonds pass-by
Who has lived in this land forever?
Path of arrival is known - but
Path of departure and the route unknown.
If all who came opt to stay
Where's the space in this sphere?
Life is just a business -in which
the birth is credit and death is debit. "
Kannadasan

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blueflame1 wrote:

Neocon Bill Kristol: Rove's departure 'odd' and puzzling David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday August 14, 2007

Neoconservative Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, appeared on Fox News Monday to express his surprise at the sudden departure of Karl Rove from the White House, scheduled for the end of August.

"September's going to be an important month," said Kristol. "General Petraeus comes back to report on the surge, huge fight in Congress, big budget fight. ... I would not have been surprised if he had announced that he was going to leave around Thanksgiving ... but September's an awfully crucial month for the Bush legacy. ... I and a lot of other people in Washington are puzzled as to why he would leave now."

Although denying any insider knowledge of the circumstances, Kristol did proceed to toss out a series of speculations: "Maybe he just, you know, was worn out. ... He does have a lot of legal challenges. ... Maybe there's something we don't know about that will come out soon. ... Maybe they just decided he was becoming a burden. ... Maybe they have a sense that in September, with General Petraeus coming up, they want to sort of remove some of that old partisan baggage, try to reach out to some Democrats."

"It is odd," Kristol acknowledged. "If I were President Bush, going into the biggest fight, arguably, of my presidency in September ... I think I would want Karl Rove with me in the West Wing."

"I'm stunned you didn't know," host Shepard Smith told Kristol. "That tells me there's something else going on here. Is that fair?"

"Could be. Could be," Kristol answered, telling Smith that "they were interviewing people for jobs, Karl was, jobs on his staff, as recently as two or three weeks ago. So either he was keeping his cards awfully close to his chest, or he made this decision pretty recently."

The following video is from Fox's Studio B, broadcast on August 13.

To quote Dorothy Parker on Lillian Hellman, "Every word she writes is a lie. Including "a" and "the".

I believe perhaps 10% of Kristol's verbal output. But the above falls in that 10%. The timing here is odd and surprising, for the reasons Kristol notes. And his suppositions on possible motive(s) look pretty sound to me.

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Conservatives do tend to lie. Look at the lies leading congress to give Bush power to invade Iraq. Subsequently, we had the swift-boaters, who successfully diminished Kerry, a true war hero, and Cleland, who lost limbs in Nam.

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The Atlantic has a cover story on "The Rove Presidency" in its latest issue. It contains an interesting analysis of Rove's political strategy based on historical precedent:

Before he ever came to the White House, Rove fervently believed that the country was on the verge of another great shift. His faith derived from his reading of the presidency of a man most historians regard as a mediocrity. Anyone on the campaign trail in 2000 probably heard him cite the pivotal importance of William McKinley's election in 1896. Rove thought there were important similarities. "Everything you know about William McKinley and Mark Hanna"?-McKinley's Rove?-"is wrong," he told Nicholas Lemann of The New Yorker in early 2000. "The country was in a period of change. McKinley's the guy who figured it out. Politics were changing. The economy was changing. We're at the same point now: weak allegiances to parties, a rising new economy." Rove was suggesting that the electorate in 2000, as in 1896, was ripe for realignment, and implying, somewhat immodestly, that he was the guy who had figured it out. What was missing was an obvious trigger. With the economy soaring (the stock-market collapse in the spring of 2000 was still months away) and the nation at peace, there was no reason to expect that a realignment was about to happen.
In any realignment election, one sees a change in party constituencies. In 1896, the Democrats fractured over the free silver issue, and hard currency Democrats went over to the GOP. In 1932, blacks deserted the Republican party and moved over to the Democrats, while organized labor abandoned its dalliance with socialism and similarly joined the New Deal coalition. In 1964, white southerners left the Democratic party for the GOP -- at first as a protest against LBJ and civil rights reforms, and then, in 1972, for good.

According to the article, Rove's main policy objectives were designed primarily to strip portions of the Democratic party away and join them to the GOP. So education reform was supposed to draw suburban women, immigration reform was supposed to draw Hispanics, social security reform was supposed to draw retiring baby boomers and the AARP crowd, etc. But all of Rove's domestic policy initiatives that were supposed to lure Democrats into the GOP fold turned out to be failure -- except for "No Child Left Behind," which never managed to turn suburban soccer moms into Phyllis Schlafley clones.

The political realignment that Rove could not accomplish with his failed domestic policies, however, may be accomplished through Bush's failed foreign policies. It just won't be the kind of political realignment that Rove was anticipating. 2008 may be a realignment election, where liberal Republicans (yes, there are still a few of them left) finally desert the GOP the way that conservative Democrats fled their party in the 1980s. We've already seen something like that in the 2004 general election, where the Northeast went entirely blue, and that trend was further reinforced in the wake of the 2006 congressional elections, when New England was left with only one GOP member of the house of representatives. If the trend continues, the GOP will be left with a core of supporters who are almost entirely white, evangelical, and rural, which is certainly not the recipe for a "permanent Republican majority" that Karl Rove envisioned in 2000.

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Roves saw George Bush and said "I will make him president." It didn't matter that the candidate he chose was an incompetent nincompoop.

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There are still so many ifs about the upcoming election, I don't have the certitude to proclaim the Dems will win. Even if they prevail, they are not the Dems I have followed. Clinton knew the nation was leaning to the right and made Republican issues his own. There has been a shift away from many Democrat favorite issues. The only way for the party to be strong will be to shift likewise. I don't see anyone restoring the common American to the center of the political arena in the foreseeable future.

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Interesting analysis, joe, but the trend continuing is a mighty big IF. The 2006 mid-term elections should have accomplished more than they did in terms of a statement to the current Congress and the focus of it's efforts. I think many moderate Republicans and Democrats are squarely back on the fence along with the Independents with regards to 2008 Presidential support and will look closely at individual candidates in the Congressional races over blindly supporting one party or another. Frustration over politics as usual, regardless of the party in power is only going to continue to grow (she says, hopefully).

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Karl Rove Leaving the White House (WSJ)

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