Karl Rove: Weapon of Mass Delusion

American Thinker ^ | 10/21/2014 | C. Edmund Wright

[EricT.]

After reading this, I want to offer my sincere and public apology to you for calling you a Republican hack.

[C. Edmund Wright]

After reading this, I want to offer my sincere and public apology to you for calling you a Republican hack.

Well, I've been called a lot worse on FR - but thanks sincerely for your words.Freep mail me and I'll get you a free copy of the book WTF? And if I said anything nasty to you, please accept my apology. I do not abide that accusation very well, and I did jump ugly with some who called me something along those lines. It burns me up, because it's so off base. And there are about a dozen others on here who should follow your lead, but they are probably not as mature and secure as you are.

Now as you know, the last thing I am is a Republican hack. I will happily debate when we might want to consider losing a few general election races because of a RINO Republican - and in some cases that's a valid point. But it's also a valid point that in some cases it's in our best interests to support the candidate. Saying so does not make one a hack or a shill or a RINO.

[Servant of the Cross]

I honestly believe that we both want the same thing - America returning to Constitutional conservative (yes, redundant) government.

We just disagree on how to get from here to there. I think a "take-over" of the existing gOpE is the better strategy. Yes, it will be a long hard slog. Yes, it might be going two steps backward before another one forward. Yes, it would be frustrating as hell. But it would be a strategy of incrementalized gains.

You appear to prefer the 'blow up the gop and start a new party' strategy. I expect that would only serve the liberal democRATS and the country would be destroyed before the new party could ever win the WH.

IMHO, the low-information voters, the product of our government schools and this media-driven culture of depravity, will never elect a POTUS from a new conservative party because the Michael Moore wing is ~40% of this idiotic electorate.

[abclily]

Hopefully, it leaves a mark on Fox News. I am soooo sick of Fox News putting the stammering, sputtering Karl Rove on as a spokesman for ANYTHING! Karl sounds like a Democrat mole in the Republican Party.

[Maceman]

Yes, I agree that we both want the same thing.

I don’t know that I think of my approach as “blow up the GOP,” but maybe you are right. I really think we are out of time to save the country, and trying to do a long-term strategy of incrementalized gains will not get us where we need to be before the country is gone.

I agree with you about the LIVs and the government schools and leftist media. That’s another reason why I propose the strategy I do, because the GOPe will not articulate a conservative message, to which I think there would be great response if only the RINOs had the passion and determination to make the arguments and to defend those conservative candidates who make them.

I remember how the country got turned on its head in 1968 when all the radical leftists took over the debage.

I firmly believe that big government statism has no inherent appeal nowadays, whereas to argue for FREEDOM will resonate with all the younger generations because they all want to be free, and a lot of them are sick of PC tyranny. It’s just that they never get to hear arguments for liberty because the GOPs refuses to make them.

I think radicalism for freedom could be the thing that turns us around, a la 1968, except this time with the good guys winning the day.

[zeugma]

BFLR

[Future Snake Eater]

Great article. “The Architect” has been vastly overrated for years. I wonder if he just keeps the right troughs filled? How else to explain his inexplicable influence when coupled with his record of failure. I would even consider 2000 and 2004 to be failures due to the incredibly thin margins Bush won them by despite the weak nature of the Dem opposition those years.

[C. Edmund Wright]

I would even consider 2000 and 2004 to be failures due to the incredibly thin margins Bush won them by despite the weak nature of the Dem opposition those years.

Totally agree - and I've said just that many times on FR, covered it in my book at length - he's over rated and ALWAYS has been. Tying Gore and beating Kerry by 3 is NOT the stuff of genius. Lee Atwater won two (somewhat) similar campaigns by 9 and 20.

[samtheman]

Is Karl Rove a superman? Does he have some kind of telepathic super-power that enabled him to take over the Bush administration?

He was chosen by Bush, kept in power by Bush, listened to by Bush and completely respected by Bush. Bush looked at Karl Rove and liked everything he saw and heard. You can’t really blame that on Karl Rove.

And what about the other people around Bush? What significant voices were there in the Bush administration arguing against Rove’s brand of Republicanism?

And what about today? Why is Rove still in the public arena today? Does he have an army of thugs in the background forcing the news media to continue to give him a voice and forcing Republicans everywhere to heed his words?

Who and what is Karl Rove? He is no superman. He has no super-powers. He commands no army of thugs.

Karl Rove is the quintessential Chamber of Congress Republican. He is the face and voice and soul of Chamber of Commerce Republicanism. He was powerful in the Bush administration because that administration was a regime of Chamber of Commerce Republicans. Rove remains influential today because Chamber of Commerce Republicans are running the Republican Party today.

Chamber of Commerce Republicans only care about business health in the most narrow sense of the word. What are this quarter’s sales figures? What is next quarter’s sales forecast?

No need for political principles. No need for political concepts of any kind. And above all DO NOT EXPRESS ANY POLITICAL OPINIONS.

Political opinions hurt sales. By all means DO NOT OFFEND ANYONE (with the obvious exception of conservatives). This is the creed of the Chamber of Commerce Republican, and Karl Rove is their prophet.

Please don’t mistake me for someone who is anti-business. On the contrary, I believe that economic freedom translates directly into personal Liberty.

But I do not believe Chamber of Commerce of Republicans know anything about Liberty or America. And I do not believe they are at all equipped to take on the party of Marx and Alinsky.

It’s interesting that the posted article mentions McCain and Romney as two who suffered the consequences of Rove’s destruction of the Republican Party. Well, there are a lot of would-be Roves out there and McCain and Romney are two of them.

[EricT.]

And if I said anything nasty to you, please accept my apology.

Apology accepted without reservation, just in case you actually said anything that offended me. I honestly don't remember.

I sometimes have a short fuse and say things in the heat of the moment that I regret later. That particular instance has been weighing on me for some time. This article proved to me once and for all that I was wrong about you.

[exit82]

Until we get Republican leaders who will at least defend themselves, conservatism will never be able to stop the centrifugal forces pushing the Republic over the brink.

You painted an excellent word picture there,nb.

[x]

Santorum on Thursday stood by that claim. “There was no active chemical-weapons operation in Iraq—that doesn’t mean there were no chemical weapons,” he said. “That was the point we were making. It’s clear from The New York Times’ article that the military as well as the administration didn’t want to have that conversation because they missed it.”

Go to war over a weapons program. There was no ongoing weapons program. Is that really something you want to keep reminding the public about?

It's a little strange, too, that somebody who was reporting about gas shells found in Iraq in 2006 is now telling us that Rove squashed the story at about that time. Short memory about what you wrote yourself, Eli? Is it really up to the White House to do the reporters' job for them?

[C. Edmund Wright]

Might I suggest respectfully that you actually READ the article - because if you did - you would have seen that I do indeed blame Bush just as much as Rove - but that Bush is NOT OUT ASKING FOR SUPER PAC MONEY AND RUNNING ADS AND CONSULTING CAMPAIGNS AND ANALYZING ON FOX AND IN THE WALL ST JOURNAL.

But hey, thanks for your interest. Reading first is a good habit.

(SOTC, I love it when the drive by commenters step in it...)

[samtheman]

I don’t know why you are getting upset. My first comment was “excellent article”.

My comment was not arguing with you (please see your wife for that) but rather just trying to answer the question, “over the years, how did Rove get so much power to influence the Republican Party”.

I was not providing an answer, just some thoughts on the subject.

Again, excellent article, and again, no one is arguing with you.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Sorry for the mis understanding - thanks for the kind words too!

Now, to your question: Rove got that power because he was viewed as the mastermind of two Republican victories coming on the heels of two Clinton routs.

This peaked with his supposedly genius manipulating of issues in Ohio in 2004. And of course, Bush called him “my brain” and “boy genius” (earlier years) and “the architect.” All of that seared into the minds of many that Rove was indeed a genius. That’s why he had, and still has, all the power and influence.

I never bought it. EVER. Hopefully this WMD revelation will put an end to the reverence he’s held in...