The conventional wisdom used to be that Rove engineered GWB’s sliver-thin victories. The view was that he was a genius. It’s becoming clear that he was just lucky.
“The conventional wisdom used to be that Rove engineered GWB’s sliver-thin victories. The view was that he was a genius. It’s becoming clear that he was just lucky.”
I think at that time, Rove did indeed have his finger on the pulse of the country, and was able to make the most of that by dialing down those elections to the extreme local level to achieve those (slight) victories.
But he has since lost that connection, and with it, his influence.
In 2004 Rove tried his best to cooperate with Kerry and the donkeys to sabotage and squelch the Swift Boat Veterans. Official Washington was in a state of boiling rage over the plebeians increasing success in showing that Kerry new clothes were invisible and that he was a fraud and a probable traitor. This strikes at the heart of the incredibly narcissistic mentality of official Washington where the people who have bribed and maneuvered their way to the top are far to important and dignified and splendid to ever brook any direct criticism or truly negative comment. Bush never thank the Swift Boat people and treated them like s-it on his shoe. Rove and Daddy Bush kept up an endless barrage of vitriol against these people to G W. The reason is simple, these were outsiders and they were effectively impacting what is supposed to be a closed system run by and for the political class. Rove and his ilk would rather lose every election than damage the political class in anyway. That is the secret masonry of the Beltway Insiders at work.