Karl Rove

Karl Rove and the Atwater Legacy

Batocchio — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:25:01 -0400

After discussing the late political consultant Lee Atwater, it was hard not to think of one of his successors, Karl Rove. Here's a quick tour of three pieces that spring to mind.

Here's Joshua Green on Rove in 2004, with the election looming:

He seems to understand—indeed, to count on—the media's unwillingness or inability, whether from squeamishness, laziness, or professional caution, ever to give a full estimate of him or his work. It is ultimately not just Rove's skill but his character that allows him to perform on an entirely different plane. Along with remarkable strategic skills, he has both an understanding of the media's unstated self-limitations and a willingness to fight in territory where conscience forbids most others.

Here's Scott Horton in 2007 (commenting in part on another piece by Green):

The question is this: What do we mean by politics? Viewed properly, the way the great philosophers of man and state have viewed it from Aristotle onwards, politics is about the great issues of how humankind arranges its affairs. It is particularly about justice, about the establishment of social ideals, about the advancement of our species. But then we have Karl Rove’s conceptualization of politics, and we learn that it’s all about winning elections and the installation of a political lock on state power for the benefit of a voracious political party. That attitude comes very close to what the ancients meant when they used the words “tyrannical” and “corrupt.” And indeed it is.

The great failure of political analysis in America over the last six years is the arrival of a class of fools, the chattering class of political commentators, who share Karl Rove’s vision of what politics is all about. America as a nation has suffered immensely for this. And with Karl Rove’s demission, perhaps their time will also soon come.

And here's Matt Taibbi in 2008:

Rove is not a genius, or even very clever: He's totally and completely immoral. It doesn't take genius to claim, as Rove ludicrously did last fall, that it was the Democrats in Congress and not George W. Bush who pushed the Iraq War resolution in 2002. It doesn't take brains to compare a triple-amputee war veteran to Osama bin Laden; you just have to be a mean, rotten cocksucker.

The reason Rove continues to survive is the same reason that Johnnie Cochran was called a genius for keeping a double-murderer on the golf course — because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can't bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. He survives because an increasing number of Americans secretly agree with Rove's vision of rules, laws and "the truth" as quaint, faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back.

Rove's comeback is evidence that the attack on our civic institutions in the Bush years wasn't an isolated incident, something we can pin on a specific group of now-deposed politicians. It's a trend, a thing that grows in direct proportion to our greed and ignorance. We may be a country at war, facing one of the greatest financial meltdowns of all time. But in the end, the thing that could be our undoing is the kind of generalized boredom with legality and honor that empowers Rovian behavior. If we let it.

What do we mean by politics, what do we value in politicians and their campaigns, and how do we measure success? An unchecked, win-at-any-cost mentality has not served us well economically, and it doesn't serve us terribly well in campaigns or governance, either. Fleecing the suckers looks far less attractive as a dominating ideology when you realize you've been one of them.

How to put Rove away for years.

Michael Kwiatkowski — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:31:21 -0400

David Swanson goes into detail about how inherent contempt can be used to imprison Karl Rove for refusing to testify before Congress.

127,000 Want Rove in Contempt

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:33:15 -0400

If Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives go forward with a floor vote to hold ex-White House chief of staff Karl Rove in contempt of Congress, a petition drive spearheaded by Brave New Films, People for the American Way, the Campaign for America's Future and other groups says, in effect, "More than 127,000 people have got your back."

The petition signatures, collected via SendRovetoJail.com in about 10 days, were delivered late Tuesday to Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law. Sanchez has been an outspoken supporter of moves to punish Rove for refusing to obey a congressional subpoena.

The process for bringing contempt charges against Rove for ignoring the subpoena was scheduled to start at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday when the House Judiciary Committee considers a resolution and report on the matter. If the committee approves the contempt resolution, it will be sent to the full House for a vote.

"I think it is ridiculous that Karl Rove thinks that he doesn't have to follow the law, and nobody in this country should be above the law. So hopefully we will get back on that path of restoring checks and balances and see if we can hold him accountable," she said.

Rove is alleged to have been behind the politically motivated prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, and is also suspected of being a driving force behind Monica Goodling's partisan political hiring abuses in the Justice Department. Rove has denied involvement in these matters, but he won't issue those denials under oath before Congress. White House Counsel Fred Fielding has advised Rove that he does not have to testify. Though media reports say the White House has cited executive privilege, whether it applies in this case is in dispute.

The big question is not whether the Judiciary Committee will vote for contempt — a party-line vote was expected, with Republicans dismissing the issue as a politically motivated witch-hunt — but whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will get behind the effort and ensure a House floor vote that would lead to Rove being jailed. At the Netroots Nation conference in Austin earlier this month, she hedged her words. She may have just wanted to keep her real thoughts on the matter out of the right-wing spin cycle, but if her caginess proves to be a sign of her reticence for holding Rove to the rule of law, whatever political repercussions that may concern her could be insignificant compared to the anger she will spark among Americans who agree with the petition signers that "since Rove regards the law with such contempt, it's high time the law and Congress hold him in contempt as well."