Karl Rove is an inadequate man, totally out of his depth in the job assigned to him. He is simply unaware of a myriad of considerations, for which his strategies obviously take no account. He only seems to be effective to people who also lack a broader perspective as to those ignored factors.
Political campaigns are won by those who are able to control the issues. When two relatively ineffective campaigns collide, people will not be even aware of this reality. Thus Rove's idiotic campaign for Bush--it almost completely destroyed the huge early lead that Bush had--still hung on to a victory, because the Gore campaign was simply a predictable rehash of the Left of Center campaigns that the Democrats had been running under Clinton--pandering to completely predictable media support for completely predictably defined interest groups.
But this is not a permanent condition. Nor should the Republican efforts to pander either to the same interest groups, or even their own traditionally defined interest groups, be written in stone. A really intelligent approach would be far more fluid. It would identify new issues for redefined interests, and would refocus even the present apparent issues and appeals, so as to maximize the appeal to voters undergoing a changing perspective.
If Rove even understands any part of this, I would be surprised. [I have deliberately, for the purpose of this brief note, ignored the moral claims of the American people and the American tradition, on any candidate. It is obvious that Rove is not aware of those either.]
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site