Posted on 11/04/2004 7:13:08 PM PST by RabbitMan
Of course, we could have done it a lot earlier on election night but for "Boy Genius" Karl Rove. It's absurd that the election was as close as it was. If Rove is "the architect" as Bush called him in his acceptance speech then he is the architect of high TV ratings, not a Republican victory.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
The election results speak for themselves.
You've got it backwards. She gets paid because she is controversial.
Good grief!!! Did you really think our President should be giving daily press releases? He would have been slammed for that and you know it. Polls throughout the campaigns said both sides ran a negative campaign...and the public didn't like it!
You need to quite whining....
Sorry, disagree Ann.
Rove followed the model he set in play years ago, and fulfilled it. They met their expectations, and exceeded them with the number of senate seats won.
This was a battle against the entire world sugarcoated by the MSM. It is amazing how well he did considering.
I think she needs to take a step back and realize-
1) We would have won earlier in the night if networks would have called his obvious state pick ups.
2) A Nixon or Reagan landslide is great, but a decisive popular vote with increases in the Senate and House is better. If given the choice, which would Reagan or Nixon have chose?
This President is a party builder. To an extent, if one wishes to build a party they incur some personal sacrifice. It's a gamble you take to win the bigger pot.
I have been telling anyone who might be listening that I think Rove is luckier than he will ever be good, so it's no surprise that I strongly agree! This is the first time that I have been in 100% complete agreement with Ann in the post-9/11 era (when she made the unfortunate statement about killing Muslim nations' leaders and "converting" their populace to Christianity).
I don't think it was Rove that kept Bush in the race, it was Bush supporters in The New Media. I think we would be bemoaning the 24-hour-a-day MSM Kerry Celebration without the Swifties, Fox News Channel, Rush, Sean, Drudge, Savage, Laura Ingraham, Jim Taranto, Powerline and other assorted bloggers, and, of course, Free Republic (lift your glasses to Buckhead!).
I can't be the only one who felt like Rove let others do the hard work of beating back the MSM/Hollywood assault while he kept Bush "on message" so tenaciously that he was really becoming kind of boring. It was as if Rove thought Bush wasn't a big boy, and couldn't blunt Kerry's half-truths head on (most notably Bush's refusal to contradict Kerry on the "firing" of Gen. Shinseki), instead relying on Rush to straighten out the story the following morning.
I think he was counting on the short attention span of the average voter, and blew the money late in the race. I mean, there must be a lot of voters who vote based on the last convincing TV propaganda ad they saw, or the number of Bush/Cheney or or Kerry/Edwards signs they saw erected on peoples' lawns. Otherwise, why bother with all that? People ought to be voting on who these people are, based on their record, their past history, but....
I agree with Ann that Rove should've had Bush come out stronger on the gay marriage fiasco. He should have stumped about the anarchy America experienced as Democrat politicians on both coasts ignored the rule of law and declared, all by themselves, that gay marriage would now be legal. Ann doesn't mention this, but Move On actually had at least one commercial in the can which depicted gays touching and kissing one another. Imagine how offensive that would be in a national campaign! Even the dimwits knew that they couldn't air it, but Rove let that pass too.
I disagree with Ann that the partial birth abortion card should have been played to a heavier extent. The ban is on shaky ground in the minds of many because there is no exception for the health of the mother - stumping for the ban as written carried risk, unlike the gay marriage issue.
I also can't believe Ann said on Scarborough Country that she was feeling sorry for Yasser Arafat. Morphine and a respirator is much too good for the likes of him.
Rove is dishonest, stupid and blundering. No campaign is a one man show. Without Rove, Bush may have gotten 60%
Ann Coulter, despite being a Bush groupie, demonstrates her common sense once again.
But then, I'm an Ann Coulter groupie...
With the MSM against him, trying to recover, economically, from the fallout of the popping of the CLinton/Greenpsan stock markte bubble, with Soros et al spending a fortune of money, and the corrupt democratic machine printing votes overtime, Rove won this thing and picked up a solid majority in the house and the senate. Just exactly how much defeat does Anne want to snatch from the jaws of victory.
Finally we have beaten the monster. We didn't beat it because we ran a better campaign, or Bush had better hair, or, or. We one because they are so corrupt and irrelevant that even all of the plusses could not save them. Now we need to slay the monster before its poison does any more harm. We need to pass election reform laws requiring honest registration, identification and vote counting.
In one way, I agree with you: Ann should not disparage Rove, who has a winning record that is the envy of political consultants.
Where I disagree with you is in how you didn't address Ann's complaint: Rove did not permit Bush to stump openly for the Defense of Marriage and Partial-Birth Abortion issues. That is a valid complaint on Ann's part. Bush could have benefited by more aggressively attaching himself to the 'Moral Values' issues.
Rove is quite bright.
Funny... folks on the left are saying the same thing about Bush. It's like that old liberal journalist from New York who couldn't believe Nixon won, because nobody she knew voted for him.
Pop your head out of the Free Republic echo chamber. The libs are a minority, but there are still plenty of them out there and enough others who, like my mom, appreciate a lot of things about Bush but couldn't bring themselves to vote for him.
Did Bush get more votes than any presidential candidate in history? Yep. Know who got the second most? Kerry. We aren't a red state country just yet, my friend.
On a related note, there are several threads (rightly) discussing our concern over Specter's comments today. With the President's decision to back off the moral issues during the election, how confident are you guys that he'll stand up to Specter or put conservative judges on the Supreme Court? Forget calling Frist and your local Senator - if Bush doesn't want Specter to be chairman, he won't be there, regardless of what others say or do. And with Bush's campaigning for Specter, I'm not counting on Specter being prevented from assuming the chairmanship.
And they were never designed to be effective in electoral politics. Just look at their IRS statuses.
And don't forget....HUGE GAINS IN THE SENATE!
she ought to be happy ,,,, she doesn't have to move out of ny now
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.