Ping
It would be a mistake to think that Rove made a ‘mistake’.
You get the leader ‘big money’ wants you to have.
Great read, thanks for posting it.
Rove is talented, but I think his mistake was more substantial than just not responding to Democrat charges. I think Karl is a “play as it lies” pol. He looks at the landscape and figures out how do I win given the current political climate. That’s why he favors going after the illegal vote and comes up with gimmicks like “compassionate conservative”. Reagan, on the other hand, sought to change the political climate by converting people to his point of view. Reagan was thinking ahead and placing his shots so that he didn’t have to contend with a bad lie.
I would need to spend five minutes in his presence because it's just not that obvious from where I'm standing.
Wow...I did not realize exactly where the weapons had gone. Today the majority of all people believe that the intelligence was wrong.
Is this true:
“Why wasn’t the Bush administration citing Gen. James Clapper, the Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who said that satellite imagery proved conclusively that shortly before the war’s outbreak, Iraq had transferred its weapons of mass destruction to Syria? Why wasn’t it quoting Gen. Georges Sada, deputy chief of Saddam’s air force, or Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s chief-of-staff, both of whom also claimed that Saddam’s weapons had been transferred to Syria? “
Sigh. “Blame Bush/Rove” yet again. Try blaming the idiotic American electorate, who thinks they will get something for nothing; try blaming ACORN, who lie and steal; and above all, try blaming the boob McCain, who refused to run a race.
As I recall, the WMD were shipped to the “Beeka Valley” in Syria, and it was talked about all over the internet. Jet planes were uncovered from under the sand, and a huge find of yellow cake uranium was even found and shipped to Canada, according to a CNN Article. But, this was no worse than not showing the clips of bwarney, maxine waters, etc. etc. refusing to fix the bad loan practices fannie/freddie that were still over at youtube.com, the last time I looked. We could have stuck the banking collapse on the democrats like a tarbaby....WT*? Makes me think a higher, and common, force was pulling the strings
Yes, President Bush and Karl Rove mishandled some aspects of the war PR campaign. Nevertheless, it’s a real stretch to blame Karl Rove for the election of Obama.
Ultimately, the blame lies with those millions who elected him without doing their homework. I’m not talking about the hard left who correctly expected him to govern as a socialist. I’m talking about those voters who foolishly fell for the hype and elected him expecting hope and change of a different sort.
The power to vote is a very valuable thing that should not be taken lightly. Most of the world doesn’t possess it. A billion Chinese, for example, would probably love to have what millions of Americans foolishly squandered in 2008.
Well, I once thought Carter was going to be a good president, too. We’re all entitled to make mistakes, and hopefully a lot of voters have now learned the hard way that votes do count.
The reason Obama is President? John McCain was the Bob Dole of the 21st Century.
I blame W.
Here’s just a few others that elected hussein obama:
George Soros - economic terrorist that should be sent to Malaysia for trial. We demand other nations send us terrorists against the USA but we harbor terrorists like Soros. I am sure that there are other nations that would want him on trial.
Soros acts like he gives a damn about the poor but yet he cause economic havoc against poor nations.
Soros also moved the HQ of his business to the Bahamas so that he wouldn’t have to pay USA taxes. The punk wants so much influence on this nation but doesn’t pay its taxes. Soros is a major advocate of decriminalization of drugs. The place where he has his business located is known for its drug money laundering.
Soros pulls the democrat parties wagon with organizations like moveon.org and several other extremist left groups.
David Geffen billionaire gay activist that played a major role in getting hussein obama elected.
David Axelrod did a replay of the same game that got Devel Patrick elected governor of Mass. — “Yes We Can,” “Just words,” etc.
Axelrod’s mother used to write for a communist newspaper so is there any doubts as to his agenda?
Of course you’ve got your ACORN and other leftist groups that contibuted to our current economic situation (forced sub-prime loans, etc.).
And we should never forget the effort that the MEDIA made to get hussein obama elected.
That’s just to name a few.
- Allowing the Democrats and media to get away with saying that the tax cuts were for the rich only.
- Not placing the subprime loan scams on the Democrats and not saying that the Republicans attempted to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going back to 2003 but that legislation was killed by the Democrats in 2004, 2005, & 2006.
I always said that Bush's biggest fault was his unwillingness to defend himself. And this goes for just about anything.
Also Rove's plan to out-democrat the democrats when it came to spending was a bad idea too.
I’m no fan of Karl Rove, but the man who elected Obama is none other than John McCain.
The unpopularity of the war and the “Bush Lied” theme was huge in the 2006 election. It was catastrophic, but wasn’t George W. Bush President of the United States at the time? You would think he had a political thought of his own and did not wait for Rove to pull the string.
I thought this article was exactly right about Rove. I’d always had the image of Rove as nothing more than a Political Animal. Even the passage cited here from his own book shows it! He says he should have done more to counter the claims Democrats were making. For the historian he & others brag on him to be, Rove evidently forgot Stalin’s famous mantra that “A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth” - which is what WMD’s became. Instead of that he said he decided to “focus on the (reelection) campaign”. These charges he left unanswered made his campaign much more difficult than it ever would have had to be. The strategy employed by them to not answer these charges and other attacks was based on the Rove Held Principle of: “When you roll around with pigs you get dirty”. Well, I guess you could say that about any enemy then - including Islamic terrorists, right Karl?. Rove’s failure or disinterest in standing for his principles shows that at root, he really has no principles. He’s a Political Hack - he’s only interested in the optimal calculus for the greatest political expediency. One thing is true: neither he nor Bush is a true Conservative.
And in a bizarre inversion, he was the one largely responsible for trying to be gracious to the very Democrats who were out to destroy him & Bush. Rove decided on the Rodney King approach in DC- “ Can’t we all just get along?”. Not only did it get us a Republican President Bush who forgot he even had a Veto Pen, but Rove’s approach was critical in establishing within the Republican Braintrust that “working with Democrats more often” will stop the harshness of the public attacks against Republicans. That mindset of “reaching across the aisle” gave us McCain. And McCain led to the election of Obama. Conservatives felt betrayed by the Bush Spending and desire to surrender to Democrats legislatively far too often, and by McCain putting that doctrine on steroids for his campaign. Rove had a huge hand in this fallout, there is no question about it.
Neither Rove nor Dubya was a true Conservative - if they had been they never would have allowed those WMD charges, nor other attacks, to go unanswered. Bush & Rove are exactly like Bush Senior & Rockefeller: Country Club Republicans. They campaign on strategy and not principles, which is what ultimately leads to their collapse. They seek political expediency for their benefit - so they’re little more than Political Animals. Their Dirty Little Secret is: both Rove & Dubya believe in the power of government to do things in people’s lives- that’s why they GREW IT! They thought they were above Conservative principles for the expressed purpose of making deals with Democrats trying to destroy them (like the Bush nonsense about having to surrender his Free Market Principles signing TARP so he could “save” the Free Market; if that doesn’t tell you he’s no Conservative nothing will). If he missed that, then Rove wasn’t much of “Bushs Brain”.
Interesting. I was always perplexed why the Bush administration didn’t stand up to the charges made daily by liberals. It’s a shame they didn’t articulate what needed to be said, although a campaign could not be run smoothly by defending an unpopular war.
The Republican landscape had been badly damaged, but even with McCain, the Republicans came fairly close to taking the election. It was no “mandate” for the left.
Plenty of blame to go around, (Soros, ACORN, etc.) but I’d mostly blame the deceitful MSM for keeping the truth from the people and promoting this socialist presidency.
PEOPLE HERE ON FREE REPUBLIC WERE SAYING THE SAME THING! So was at least one national publication: The Weekly Standard....
The Bush team seemed to get SO tied up in "governing", they forgot to hit back at the lies told by their critics.
Other conservatives were screaming bloody effing MURDER over the lies told by the left....we cannot let this happen again, IF we are given the opportunity to govern.
In fact, we need to start right now.
THE MASSIVE FAILURE of the "stimulus"--Obama promised unemployment at 8%. We are at 10%, essentially, right now. The only place I hear anyone mentioning the stimulus failure is on talk radio!!
Where the HELL are the Republican leaders???? That type of MASSIVE failure ought to be a mantra. Even if BO gets us to 8% unemployment, he is still FAILING......
The MSM elected Obama...just as every policy, and every syllable and tone the Republicans use is in response to the MSM.