I can’t imagine anything finer or more poetic will be written about Karl der Grosse than what Bill Moyers has written. I quote a small part; read the whole thing. mjh

Bill Moyers Journal: My Fellow Texan

“Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious, draft-averse, naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God’s anointed in a state where preachers and televangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts, Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat — a battering ram, aimed at the devil’s minions. Especially at gay people. It’s so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber. And if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew in politics to bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.”

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/08/my_fellow_texan.html

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[mjh: Put a little more bluntly by Meyerson.]

Harold Meyerson – Rove’s Blind Spot – washingtonpost.com

“Rove always believed that with the right mix of legislation and presidential leadership, constituencies could be moved from the Democratic to the Republican column, much like pieces on a chessboard. Green identifies five policy initiatives that Rove thought would create a Republican majority and that he and George W. Bush decided to pursue: establishing educational standards, pursuing faith-based initiatives, reforming immigration laws, creating health savings accounts and privatizing Social Security. Thus would the Republicans destroy teachers unions, mobilize the moralists and win over Hispanics. Thus would they break the link between the American people and government programs and create a world in which Americans’ well-being and security depended almost entirely on the markets.

“Early in Bill Clinton’s presidency, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol had persuaded Republicans to oppose Clinton’s health-care program on political grounds: The provision of universal health coverage would permanently help the Democrats and hence should be defeated. A couple of years later, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in tandem with Republican strategist Grover Norquist, began proclaiming that government programs such as Medicare and Social Security were artifacts of the industrial age, and, now that the economy had moved on to the information age, Americans would rely on the market for their security if only those creaking relics from the New Deal and the Great Society could be disposed of. By 2000, Rove and Bush had joined these peewee league intellectuals in arguing that the economic changes of our age required the lowering of the old safety nets.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081401330.html

ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor
Government and Bridge Failed State Full of Deficient Bridges

AMERICA HAS built more transportation infrastructure per capita and per unit of gross domestic product than any other member of the G8. We may not be capable of maintaining it all, because we are enthralled by the mantra of “low taxes.” We are paying the price in lives lost at home and in Iraq. …

This is the cost of the success of Republican adviser Grover Norquist— famous for his widely-quoted comment that he would shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”— and let America fall apart. [mjh: I hope Norquist drowns in his own violent metaphor someday.]

That’s what the Republicans have done ever since Ronald Reagan was elected and Norquist founded the misleading “Americans for Tax Reform” (for the rich). Now we pay the price. Highways fail. People die. A Republican governor and president prove again they don’t know how to run and sustain a country, a war and a highway system. Remember how we haven’t recovered from Katrina, yet?

We can’t keep cutting taxes and expect success. We are a great country and we need to pay the real cost to keep it great— and fight our wars. That means we pay taxes today. We do not borrow against our children and we do not let America fall apart.

JOHN HOOKER
Los Ranchos
de Albuquerque

Amen. The penny-pincher’s credo is: “You’ll get my fair contribution to the commonwealth when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers — until we eliminate Death Taxes!”

The fair-and-balanced Journal, mindful of the accusations of its liberal leanings — pause to snort, howl, laugh, wipe tear from eye — answered Hooker’s thoughtful letter with another:

Can’t Pin Collapse on Bush

… Don’t these whiny Democrats have anything better to come up with? The liberal politicians in Washington don’t know how to lead, so they shift the blame of everything that goes wrong in this country over to conservatives. That is dishonest and disingenuous on the part of Democratic politicians. …

KIM BERGET
Albuquerque

Once again, I have to wonder if the conservative view isn’t really some bad joke from liberals attempting to make conservatism appear brain-dead. But, no, they really believe what they think.

Shall we ignore that Republicans ruled the land from 2000 to 2006 and 1980 to 1992 before that? (And acted like a guerrilla army in the years between.) Hasn’t the “conservative view” been very thoroughly tested and discredited? Had enough yet? mjh

Karl der Grosse has left the White House for the last time. The man who “architected” a generation of Republican power (hah!) and handed Bush the huge political capital he claimed after 2004 just rode off into the sunset. Mission accomplished.

No doubt he’ll be back as Bush’s last nominee to the Supreme Court. Gotta finish stacking the deck to protect Duhbya and Dick from all the shit that’s coming down in the next decade.

It’s disheartening to hear that Rove’s departure may strengthen Cheney’s hand, as if that were actually possible. With luck, an emboldened Cheney will reel out just enough rope for his own hanging. (Note to the Fatherland Defenders: I’m being purely metaphorical. I wish Dick and Duhbya long lives full of regrets.) mjh

PS: If you think I hate Rove — well, you’re right, but see what conservative godfather Dick Viguerie has to say about Karl.

Richard Viguerie on Karl Rove’s Resignation:
Good News for Conservatives

(Manassas, Virginia) The following is a statement from Richard A. Viguerie, author of Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006), on the resignation of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove:

“Karl Rove’s departure from the White House is good news for conservatives. We may—may—have a more conservative Bush presidency with Rove back in Texas. [mjh: Shudder. Be afraid, be very afraid.]

“As President Bush’s chief political advisor, Karl Rove was a master in the care and feeding of conservative leaders, keeping them mostly silent as the Republican Party moved Left during the Bush presidency. [mjh: ROFLOL.]

“He used the usual carrot and stick to do this. The carrot was access to the White House—and conservative leaders proved just as vulnerable as others to the lure of a photo op with the President, lunch in the West Wing, or a returned phone call from Karl Rove. The stick was fear—speak out, and not only will you lose any hope of access, you will be branded as an extremist, or someone who’s helping the Democrats by speaking out. [mjh: Fear? I thought that was the heart of the Republican worldview — live in fear at all times.]

“Using both carrot and stick, Karl Rove was able to silence or get the support of most conservative leaders as President Bush and congressional Republicans greatly expanded the size and reach of the federal government, including (but certainly not limited to)…

* No Child Left Behind
* McCain-Feingold
* Prescription drug benefits
* Nation-building on a scale never attempted before
* Farm subsidies
* Steel tariffs
* Massive federal deficits

“Yes, Karl Rove was a political genius—he was, after all, the successful architect of Bush’s election in 2000 and reelection in 2004. But as the President’s chief policy advisor, Rove was the architect of George W. Bush’s betrayal of the conservative cause.

“Karl Rove’s biggest failure was to leave the White House without achieving his stated goal of establishing the Republicans as America’s permanent governing party. To even mention that today—after the 2006 elections, President Bush’s plummeting poll numbers, and the GOP’s bleak prospects for 2008—brings embarrassment or laughter, depending on your political viewpoint. No wonder Karl Rove wants to forget about those boasts.

“Rove failed in that goal primarily because he attempted to advance the Republican Party by using raw, naked political power and bribing voters. He copied the Democrats and was more successful than them—for a while. But then conservatives and independents caught on to his game. We started rebelling, first over Harriet Miers and most recently over the amnesty bill. Meanwhile, the Republican Party had lost its “brand” as the party of small government.

How do we recover from the Rove Era? We have to reject the bribing of voters and instead build on President Reagan’s legacy. We must re-establish the conservative movement (and the Republican Party, if it wishes to survive) as the movement and party of ideas, empowering people instead of government, and with a strong national defense but no more nation-building.

“Bush’s brain” will soon be gone. Let’s hope that wiser counsel prevails in the White House in the future, but let’s not depend on that. We conservatives have work to do.” [mjh: Shudder. Be afraid, be very afraid.]
–30–

NOTE to EDITORS: Richard A. Viguerie pioneered ideological and political direct mail and has been called “the funding father of the conservative movement” for his role in helping build dozens of conservative organizations. He is the author of Conservatives Betrayed–How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006).

I hope Dick Viguerie joins other conservatives in calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. mjh

PPS: Please (re-)read my Left Undone, a series of four blog entries. If it seems over-the-top, consider the genre and the time — right after Karl declared a generation of Republican power was at hand.