Why I like Karl Rove.

[DVCLiz]

Saying you like Karl Rove because he is loyal is like saying you admire the devil because he keeps his house warm all winter.

 

[crazyforgoofy]

Saying you like Karl Rove because he is loyal is like saying you admire the devil because he keeps his house warm all winter.

 

[Charade]

It's called lurking.

Might want to look into it.

Nah, I'm good!

 

[Maecenus]

Nah, I'm good!

That's certainly open to debate, now, isn't it?

 

[Charade]

That's certainly open to debate, now, isn't it?

Not really.

 

[yeartolate]

I am sorry,but if he is the mastermind of the "make the folks believe McCain has a ******* black baby" so Bush can win the primary.....he is an ugly awful disgusting man.


I think the man brings out the worst in the Republican party.

He certainly is willing to sink to any low for the cause. I do not think his actions have helped this country prosper.

 

[JARNJ3]

At least one of the reasons:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/05/23/rove-resists-subpoena-from-house-dems/

 

[Goofyluver]

 

[jodifla]

I am sorry,but if he is the mastermind of the "make the folks believe McCain has a ******* black baby" so Bush can win the primary.....he is an ugly awful disgusting man.


I think the man brings out the worst in the Republican party.

He certainly is willing to sink to any low for the cause. I do not think his actions have helped this country prosper.

ITA!

The only upside to Karl Rove is that his despicable tatics finally caught up with him, and helped to drive the fed-up electorate right into the arms of waiting Democrats!

 

[CPT Tripss]

I am sorry,but if he is the mastermind of the "make the folks believe McCain has a ******* black baby" so Bush can win the primary.....he is an ugly awful disgusting man.


I think the man brings out the worst in the Republican party.

He certainly is willing to sink to any low for the cause. I do not think his actions have helped this country prosper.

Too true.

Click here to see what he deserves http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-rovearrested.htm

 

[DawnCt1]

It's called lurking.

Might want to look into it.

You have lurked for all of these years and now all of a sudden you just can't help yourself...Yeah right.

 

[DawnCt1]

I am sorry,but if he is the mastermind of the "make the folks believe McCain has a ******* black baby" so Bush can win the primary.....he is an ugly awful disgusting man.


I think the man brings out the worst in the Republican party.

He certainly is willing to sink to any low for the cause. I do not think his actions have helped this country prosper.

Karl Rove had absolutely nothing to do with that. That emerged from a local campaign in South Carolina.

 

[manning]

 

[LukenDC]

Meet is Dem counterpart...

I cannot stand Karl Rove and Rahm Emanuel looks sleazy. As an earlier poster said, corruption is bi-partisan.

 

[Goofycampers]

Karl Rove prides himself on being able to manipulate the masses by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Disney manipulates the masses as well, but at least when Disney does it the customer gets something out of the exchange. Those who were manipulated by the Rove machine got 9/11, the war in Iraq, Katrina victims, and a failing economy.

Admire Karl Rove all you like. This is, after all, America. But don't expect the people who were irreparably harmed by the past Presidential Administration to join you in your admiration.

Are you serious? You actually are going to blame all of this on Carl Rove, or even republicans in general? You are very misinformed.

 

[yeartolate]

Karl Rove had absolutely nothing to do with that. That emerged from a local campaign in South Carolina.

Sure he wasn't behind it. To Rove, taking the high road meansletting someone else do your dirty work.

The man is all about winning at all costs, and look where we are 8 years later becase of it. We are a bitter divided nation that needs to heel.

 

[SteveInBrooklyn]

What about Iraq and the economy?
The world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone.

The question should be: Is America a safer place with Saddam Hussein gone? I say it isn't because Saddam was not a threat to us, the war we started caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis (and eventually the chickens will come home to roost on that one) and we now have too much of our military bogged down in Iraq.

 

[JARNJ3]

Karl Rove had absolutely nothing to do with that. That emerged from a local campaign in South Carolina.

Rove had everything to do with that:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/327704_amy16.html

Rove's dirty tricks: Let us count the ways

By AMY GOODMAN
COLUMNIST

Karl Rove's resignation as deputy White House chief of staff cements the political future of the waning Bush administration. George W. will have little to do except wield his veto pen; he doesn't need the steadying hand of Rove for that, or his strategic insight.

As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign "in order to spend more time with family," a retrospective of his dirty tricks might be in order. Much is attributed to Rove, dubbed "Bush's Brain" by Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore, yet very little sticks to the man. Bearing in mind that we presume innocence until guilt is proven, read on:

# In 1970, College Republican Rove stole letterhead from the Illinois Democratic campaign of Alan Dixon, and used it to invite hundreds of people to Dixon's new headquarters opening, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing," disrupting the event.

# In 1973, Rove ran for chairman of the College Republicans. He challenged the front-runner's delegates, throwing the national convention into disarray, after which both he and his opponent, Robert Edgeworth, claimed victory. The dispute was resolved when Rove was selected through the direct order of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who at the time was none other than George H.W. Bush.

# In 1986, while working for Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful William Clements, Rove claimed that his personal office had been bugged, most likely by the campaign of incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark White. Nothing was proved, but the negative press, weeks before the election, helped Rove's man win a narrow victory. FBI agent Greg Rampton removed the bug, disrupting any attempt to properly investigate who planted it.

# When Rove advised on George W. Bush's 1994 race for governor of Texas against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, a persistent whisper campaign in conservative East Texas wrongly suggested that Richards was a lesbian. According to Texas journalist Lou Dubose: "No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove. Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it. It's a process on which he holds a patent. Identify your opponent's strength, and attack it so relentlessly that it becomes a liability. Richards was admired because she promised and delivered a 'government that looked more like the people of the state.' That included the appointment of blacks, Hispanics and gays and lesbians. Rove made that asset a liability."

# After John McCain thumped George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, with 48 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent, a massive smear campaign was launched in South Carolina, a key battleground. TV attack ads from third groups and anonymous fliers circulated, variously suggesting that McCain's experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam left him mentally scarred with an uncontrollable temper, that his wife, Cindy, abused drugs and that he had an African-American "love child." In fact, the McCains adopted their daughter Bridget from a Bangladesh orphanage run by Mother Teresa.

# According to the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Rove played a central role in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in retaliation for her husband Joe Wilson's accusation that the Bush administration falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Niger.

# Rove has ignored subpoenas to testify before Congress regarding the Justice Department scandal of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He skipped a hearing on improper use of RNC e-mail accounts by White House staff, which allowed them to skirt the Presidential Records Act. Rove claims he enjoys executive privilege, which travels with him as he leaves the White House.

These are but some of the dirty tricks attributed to Karl Rove. We are to believe that Rove, born Christmas Day, 1950, is retiring to write books. Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner and populist firebrand Jim Hightower describes Rove's departure as "a rat jumping off a sinking ship." But arch-Rove watcher Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News knows better. He notes that Rove and his wife have built a house in the Florida Panhandle -- the "Republican Riviera" -- and that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be 59 in 2012, a ripe age for a run for the White House.

Regardless, the art and science of the political dirty tricks, learned by Rove in the Nixon years and perfected by him in the George W. Bush White House, will be with us for years to come.

 

[JARNJ3]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/banks

Dirty Tricks, South Carolina and John McCain
By Ann Banks

Ann Banks: Undone in South Carolina by the Bush campaign's dirty tricks in 2000, John McCain now turns to the man who smeared him.

January 14, 2008

Eight years ago this month, John McCain took the New Hampshire primary and was favored to win in South Carolina. Had he succeeded, he would likely have thwarted the presidential aspirations of George W. Bush and become the Republican nominee. But Bush strategist Karl Rove came to the rescue with a vicious smear tactic.


Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.

It worked. Owing largely to the Rove-orchestrated whispering campaign, Bush prevailed in South Carolina and secured the Republican nomination. The rest is history--specifically the tragic and blighted history of our young century. It worked in another way as well. Too shaken to defend himself, McCain emerged from the bruising episode less maverick reformer and more Manchurian candidate.

The former crusader against the Republican establishment has since turned into a Bush-hugging, business-as-usual politician who has backed down from many positions that set him apart from conventional conservatives. Before, McCain supported the separation of church and state; now he wants a Christian in the White House. The confederate flag, which he once considered an offensive symbol, no longer troubles him. And he has come to believe that tax cuts are a good idea.

I don't want to say that McCain sold his soul to the devil, since I believe that religious metaphors have no place in politics. But consider this: shortly after losing the 2000 election, McCain told an interviewer that there must be "a special place in hell" reserved for the rumormongers.

Seven years later, who is running McCain's South Carolina campaign? Charlie Condon, the former State Attorney General who in 2000 helped spread the innuendo targeting Bridget. If you can't beat them, hire them--even if they've launched racist attacks against your own daughter.

Bridget McCain was a seriously ill baby in Mother Teresa's orphanage when Cindy McCain visited and decided to bring her back to the United States for medical treatment in 1991. John and Cindy adopted her not long after. Now 16, Bridget learned of her role in the 2000 campaign only when she Googled herself. According to the New York Times, when McCain entered the current race, Bridget summoned his aides and asked them to pledge that this campaign would be different.

We can't know what reassurances were offered, but Condon doesn't seem to have repented for his role in the 2000 slander. He told the New York Times reporter that he wasn't surprised about the downward spiral of the Bush-McCain race. "Our primaries have a way of doing that," Condon said. "There is a tradition of it, it is accepted behavior, and frankly it works."

John McCain is now favored to win in South Carolina. The personal attacks of the 2000 election season, he recently told an interviewer, were "long ago and far away." "I had to get over it.... I don't ever think about them or dwell on them." Cindy McCain agrees. "We're past that. We've moved on."

The McCains may have moved on, but I haven't. Bush made a decisive step toward the White House by spreading lies about an 8-year-old child. (Not to mention a couple of decorated war veterans.) These vile tactics are not OK. If something similar were to happen in a high school election, those responsible would be suspended and black marks would be entered on their permanent records. But in politics, it seems, there's no such thing as a permanent record. Consequences do not exist--however blatant the misconduct.

It's time we changed that. In the 2008 election, voters need to send a message that attention is being paid--that this time liars and cheats will be defeated, not given a free hall pass.

 

[DawnCt1]

Sure he wasn't behind it. To Rove, taking the high road meansletting someone else do your dirty work.

The man is all about winning at all costs, and look where we are 8 years later becase of it. We are a bitter divided nation that needs to heel.

What I find as curious, in fact, perhaps hypocritical, is that there is all of this feigned outrage on behalf of John McCain, a candidate and a public figure, and yet you seemed absolutely okay with the public skewering of Joe the Plumber, a private citizen. In fact, it wasn't an Obama campaign worker that ridiculed him, but Obama himself. The state of Ohio dug into his private records, but that didn't seem to bother you either.