You also have seen the light, my brother. From a post-election post of mine:
Most egregious of all of Bush/Rove/Card/Mehlman/McClellan's sins was the inability to play rough with the media when all the facts were indisputably on their side. They didn't manage the media, they let the media manage them. They even let a glowing profile of Judge Charles Pickering on 60 Minutes go to waste! Pickering was being tarred and feathered as a Jim Crow fan who lightened the sentence on a KKK member, and it was left up to guys like the now-liberated Rush Limbaugh to make the case because nobody else seemed interested!
I have said Rove isn't now and never was a genius many times on FR and have been pilloried for it. I think he had the good fortune to have run against two unbelievably arrogant blowhards who didn't have any ideas that America would embrace. This time, he was running against Nancy Frigging Pelosi, "my" Congressperson (it makes me feel slimy just saying it). Nancy Pelosi is not just an empty dress, she is a see-thru empty dress. She's a cipher. She's got nothing. She's never done anything but raise millions for the Democrats. And now, if anything happens to Bush & Cheney, God forbid -- NANCY PELOSI IS GOING TO BE PRESIDENT. I can hardly believe I wrote that last sentence, and the worst part is that it's true.[When he predicted retaining control of the legislature] I wanted to believe Rove knew something we didn't. He didn't, he doesn't, and I was right. But I so wanted to be wrong this time.
Sorry, Rove worshippers, I am not convinced that he is an electoral Einstein by two Presidential wins because, as I wrote earlier, the competition was weak, the wins were close when they shouldn't have been, and the goal is not simply victory but implementation of lasting change.
Tax cuts and the resulting economy? Fantastic! But why weren't they crowing about the economy when the MSM was talking it down? Now that they've lost control, we could lose the cuts as well.
Saddam is gone; terrific! But in the shouts of "There were NO WMDs!" why soft-pedal the discovery that Saddam's nuke programs were on the back-burner until sanctions ended (Duelfer Report) and only release the newly-discovered documents when endangered GOP candidates demanded it? And when things didn't go as planned in the aftermath of the war, and the President knew things had to change, why lie about retaining Rumsfeld? Now, Bush may be headed in the direction of solutions that sound too close to Joe Biden's for comfort!
I have been skeptical about Rove's competency ever since his blunder of hiring Ann Richards loyalists in 2000 almost cost Bush the debates with Gore and thus the Presidency (see Lozano, Juanita Yvette). If he's gone, it's not only not a moment too soon, it's years too late.
Rove helped Bush sneak in the backdoor as Prez in 2000 (barely), and the 2002 and 2004 wins were basically riding the wave of 9-11 patriotism. Once that was gone, Rove had nothing.