13
Aug
Karl Rove has announced he is resigning effective August 31.
Good.
I have always felt Rove is a genius at coordinating national campaigns. Probably the best there is right now. However, he works best in the background. When subjected to direct scrutiny he just doesn’t look so good and never took the heat for actions most people felt were at his direction. I don’t think he served President Bush well because of that.
Now, before people read too much into all this, I’m going to jump in and give my two cents. I see this occurring for two reasons that should make Hillary Clinton nervous:
- Rove was the favorite target of Nancy Pelosi and the DNC. They won’t have that cheap target to attack any more. Rove was the catalyst of the accusations the DNC and Pelosi used in their “culture of corruption” that too many dolts bought. There will be no single name for Hillary to pin the corruption on now. Everyone is gone.
- When all looked like Bill Clinton was preparing to basically take over all of Congress due to his popularity, a strange thing happened on the way to the White House. Bill lost control of Congress. That political collapse was coordinated by a very low-key Karl Rove.
So, although there are other candidates running in the Democrat primary, the person Rove’s departure should scare the most is Hillary Clinton. When Rove’s in the background, he’s dangerous.
It should scare Nancy Pelosi even more, but I really don’t think she’s smart enough to know it.
As a Republican, I see this is a good move for the Republican Party. Things went great when Rove was in the background, pretty bad when Rove was in the spotlight. And, given Nancy and Harry’s inept leadership of the Democrat Party, Rove is positioning himself for another “takeover” of Congress. This guy is sharp. He is a LOT sharper than they are. I feel much more confident in 2008 with Rove lurking in the background than with him in the spotlight. We’ll see what happens, but I bet he’s not going too far from where he is now.
I’m gonna do a quickie update here. I probably should have waited a little to do the original in the first place. I imagine there will be a ton of very polarized opinion pieces done on Rove’s departure, but for right now, I’m gonna hilite a couple I like particularly from both sides.
Peter Wehner makes a great post about working with Karl Rove at RealClearPolitics. He spends a lot of time talking about what a wonderful person Karl Rove is. That’s all fine and good, but the meat is when he makes this statement:
But Karl’s extraordinary achievements in politics unfortunately occluded his extraordinary command of policy. Rove’s knowledge of the smallest, most mind-numbing details of policy – from economics, to energy, to the environment, to education, to entitlement programs to so much else — was legendary around the White House and among those, including reporters, who engaged in substantive discussions with him. Anyone who has heard Rove go on at length about using the principle of equidistance to determine seaward lateral boundaries, a principle discussed by the 17th century philosopher Hugo Grotius and since upheld by two Supreme Court decisions, knows what I mean. Karl seemed to know more about a particular issue than the policy experts themselves.
In my opinion, this nuance about Bush is what will be missing come September 1. Now, I think a lot of the problems we’ve dealt with over the last six years has been due to the media being completely frustrated because they painted Bush as a blathering idiot who couldn’t say nukular right. But, when it came to implementing policy, no matter how politically polarizing it might be, he always seemed to get it right. Think The Patriot Act. How many lawsuits did it withstand? How many political attacks did it withstand? Once the Democrats got in control, what part of The Patriot Act have they seen fit to get rid of? Fact is, for the most part, the policy behind The Patriot Act was dead-on legal. I’m gonna bet it had a huge chunk of Karl Rove contributing to it. It wasn’t something Bush made up overnight, I can guarantee you that. Anyone can nitpick pieces of any law or legislation. Someone who truly understands the law and what it is supposed to be accomplishing and how it intertwines with other laws is the person who gets things done. My guess, that person was Karl Rove. My guess is also that is why he was the favorite punching bag of most Democrats. However, with a lame duck president and a minority position in Congress, I think Karl is also smart enough to know he can afford twelve months off.
The second opinion of course comes from Chris Matthews. He’s got a hard ball against Republicans, so I knew I wouldn’t have to wait too long. His commentary comes courtesy of
Newsbusters.
Chris Matthews: "No, I think you’re gonna see Henry Waxman, watch him today on the House committee, he’s chairman. He’s got a hot subpoena ready for this guy. You gotta bet on the, on the, on the, the CIA leak case. And the other guy, even hotter, I think, Pat Leahy on the Judiciary committee of the Senate. Really, has already issued a subpoena for this guy. What happens when you’re no longer a White House staffer? Are you still able to use executive privilege? It’s an interesting question. I’m not sure it’s been tested. I think it’ll be tested again, severely. It’s gonna be hot stuff today. It will be Hardball tonight, I gotta tell you. What I want to do is, if our producers are listening, what I really want tonight is, I really want Pat Leahy and Henry Waxman tonight."
The problem Chris Matthews has here is he is making things up on the fly. The "CIA leak case" is history. The
courts decided there was no "leak". What is Waxman going o subpoena him on now? If he tries, you read it here
first, Rove with chew Waxman up and spit him out. Rove is mart, dangerously so. Waxman’s an idiot, dangerously so. won’t say Waxman won’t try, but it won’t go anywhere because O CRIME WAS COMMITTED. THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO
INVESTIGATE. If Waxman tries, Rove will make sure the world knows it’s a cheap political witch hunt. I personally
don’t think Waxman will. My guess is he just wants Rove ut of his so he can take direct shots at Bush. And, I
think Waxman’s smart enough to know that Rove can sit around ith his family all day and night and be one phone call away
from Bush the entire time. So, I just don’t this happening.
Now, my summary about Leahy is completely different. First of all, there IS something to investigate. Although o laws were broken, it is an ongoing event where they are
trying desperately to prove Bush did something no other resident before him did. The problem they’ve got is it is
pretty much run-of-the-mill politics that occurred. Leahy as to paint this as something unique to get anywhere with it
outside of the very supportive and biased media like Chris Matthews. They can rant all they want, but it’s not their
necks on the line. My guess is Leahy will seek cooperation
with Rove, but it will go nowhere as this investigation has gone as well. There’s just no real meat there. People ere fired, a year later they’re still trying to figure out if t was legal or not. That folks, means someone’s hunting or anything. Rove has nothing to gain cooperating with
Leahy, and it can not be proven that Rove had anything to do with it. In order to get a subpoena you have to state why hat subpoena should be served. My guess, Leahy can not
find a "why". I don’t think Rove was involved. Even
if Leahy does get a subpoena, watch Bush pardon Rove so fast the
ink won’t settle on that subpoena. I don’t think Leahy is
looking for a good public bitch-slap no matter how desperately
Matthews wants Leahy to put his neck on the line.
Bottom line, I think people like Matthews see the problem of
Rove being an unrestricted free-agent. Some are already
hoping Rove is on their team. Notably some people are
speculating this is what Fred Thompson was waiting for. If
that’s the case and it does happen. Thompson becomes a
hell of a factor. And, as with Bush, you’ll probably never
know he was there. When you do, you’ll be calling
President Thompson’s office.
I think that’s all I’ve got to say about that right now.
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Moonage Political Webdream » Blog Archive » Alberto Gonzales resigning on 08.27.2007
[...] tiring of that pretty quick considering the money he could make in the private sector. When Karl Rove left, I could see that pretty much leaving Gonzales as the only target left for those that so resented [...]