Karl Rove’s transition from mythic to comic figure

December 4, 2007

Anyone who’s watched the Republican presidential candidates’ debates knows that the GOP hopefuls go to great lengths to avoid mentioning the word “Bush.” The audience will hear plenty of references to Hillary Clinton, and quite a few mentions of Ronald Reagan, but it’s not unusual to go entire debates without a single candidate mentioning the incumbent Republican president at all.

Karl Rove, who still seems to believe he’s a credible prognosticator, insists the GOP field is making a mistake keeping Bush at arm’s length.

President Bush, down and all but counted out by friend and foe alike just three months ago, is rising like a bloodied but unbowed prizefighter, and Karl Rove predicts peril for Republicans and their presidential nominee if they shun the lame-duck president on the campaign trail. […]

“Nobody can risk looking disrespectful to the president without paying a price, and they need to understand that,” said Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush’s former top political adviser.

And what “price” might that be, exactly?

I appreciate the fact that Rove is too often detached from reality, but urging Republicans to embrace the least popular, least successful president in modern history is about as smart as assuring Republican candidates in 2006 that Dems couldn’t possibly win back both chambers of Congress. Oh wait, ol’ Karl did that, too — telling NPR before the midterms that he’d found a secret math that gives him insights that mere mortals can’t comprehend.

If Dems are really lucky, Republicans will forget the fact that Rove’s record on electoral predictions is surprisingly weak and they’ll take his advice.

Regrettably, that seems unlikely.

On MSNBC’s Hardball [yesterday], host Chris Matthews asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, “should the Bushies vote for you because you’re the closest thing to keeping him in for a third term.” McCain reacted by laughing awkwardly for several seconds before catching his breath to say, “I hope they would vote for me because they recognize the challenges, particularly in national security.” McCain refused to say whether people who like Bush will like him or not.

It’s probably worth remembering, from time to time, that Rove’s alleged genius has always been exaggerated to the point of comedy. In 2000, he pulled out all the stops to help Bush win the New Hampshire GOP primary, where McCain won by double digits. On Election Day 2000, it was Rove’s idea to keep his candidate in California in the waning days, instead of campaigning in key battleground states. Bush lost California by a wide margin, and Rove’s strategy practically cost his candidate the election. More recently, Rove’s single responsibility was overseeing the Republican Party’s 2006 election strategy — and Dems won back both chambers of Congress in a historic victory.

And now Rove thinks Bush is an unbowed prizefighter, picking himself up off the ropes? Please, Republicans, I’m begging you — take Rove seriously.

And now Rove thinks Bush is an unbowed prizefighter, picking himself up off the ropes? Please, Republicans, I’m begging you — take Rove seriously.

Well, Bush does exhibit many of the symptoms of being punch drunk;>

  • No matter the latest reports, I still believe war with Iran is still probable.

    Far from comic, I still find MC Rove threatening (as much as one can feel threatened by someone who looks like an aging Pillsbury Doughboy), but he has done horrible things to this country. For all those left wing nut jobs like me who still believe in the “Bush/ Cheney 2009 coup theory” it sounds like a warning.

    I don’t find it funny at all.

  • That’s what happens when you stay inside a bubble. Everywhere you look there’s a guy just like you saying the same thing you are. Everyone agrees, so you must be right.

    Stay in the bubble, Karl. You should be in jail, of course, but we’ll take what we can get.

    BTW, IMO Rove isn’t necessarily a genius per se, IMO he’s more of an evil genius, a guy who is willing to pull the tricks that work on certain people, but like most evil people he’s also mental, hence his failures at various times. Ask McCain if Rove knows anything about winning elections.

    BTW, if we had real Democratic leadership instead of a bunch of invertibrate schemers, he would be made an example of and he would have to write his columns from inside the slammer.

  • Rove’s strategy practically cost his candidate the election

    Practically?

    Still, I agree, we should definitely fund a Rove-a-thon on Fox

  • I agree with Deborah. Rove and his gang will soon realize that knocking over the chess board is the only way to not lose big next November. There’s no telling what they might think up to do that.

  • Karl Rove predicts peril for Republicans and their presidential nominee if they shun the lame-duck president on the campaign trail.

    That’s a very safe prediction. Republican candidates will shun Bush. Republican candidates will come to grief in large numbers. Rove is a genius!

  • I still find MC Rove threatening (as much as one can feel threatened by someone who looks like an aging Pillsbury Doughboy)

    Hey, the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man was supposed to be a harmless choice, too.

  • What is causing Bush to rise, rather than his indomitable spirit, is actually the relative lightness of his head. This annoyance can be minimized by rubbing his head briskly on a wool surface such as a sweater, and sticking him to an interior wall.

  • I guess Ron Paul is “paying a price.”

    Ron Paul On The Abrams Report 10-10-07

    ABRAMS: “Do you want President Bush’s endorsement?”

    PAUL: “I don’t. I-I have. It has not crossed my mind because I know that it wouldn’t come.”

    ABRAMS: “But would you want it? If he said to you, if he said ‘I want to know. Do you want my endorsement?’”

    PAUL: “I would lose credibility.”

    ABRAMS: “So, you would say ‘no.’”

    PAUL: “I-I think that would hurt me. He wouldn’t offer it and I wouldn’t ask for it.”

    ABRAMS: “You would say ‘no’ to President Bush’s endorsement?”

    PAUL: “No, I would lose all credibility, because I’ve ran against his policies.”

  • It must be hard for Rove to lose the limelight and adulation. I suspect Rove will start escalating the rhetoric in order to continue being newsworthy, just as Ann Coulter has. He and poor Ann Coulter both suffer from this growing sense of irrelevancy.

  • The Shrub is like an “unbowed prizefighter”, but principle has nothing to do with it. He continues to play the role he stole only he doesn’t realize what the rest of us do: he’s toast.

    The fact that Pelosi’s fighting him after having tied both hands behind her back doesn’t help matters.

  • Um, I think it was the Washinton Times calling Bush a blooded but unbowed prizefighter (pretty ridiculously adulating language, if you ask me), not Rove.

    Also, for the record, if I’ve ever written “Bushies” in comments, I think I’ve always meant it to refer to Bushes staff, or his immediate social circle, or his political appointees- brainwashed, amoral loyalists who are blind to the fact that he;s so stupid, don’t see anything going wrong for him almost ever, and in most circumstances have been willing to do anything for him (or at least say they will or that people should). But this should have always been clear from context. Matthews’ quote is, I think, the first time I’ve heard someone try to describe “Bushies” as a populist movement. Just don’t want to leave the blogosphere confused.

  • urging Republicans to embrace the least popular, least successful president in modern history (referring to the Current Resident) …

    Really? More unpopular than Herbert Hoover? Whose policies resulted in the establishment of shanty towns referred to as “Hoovervilles”? Whose ineptitude contributed to the depth of the Great Depression?

    I don’t know what metric to use to measure relative harms, but Hoover’s refusal to spend government money on relief undoubtedly cost lives. He was more willing to get food to Europeans (post WWi, pre-presidency) than to Americans during the Depression. Certainly, he accomplished more of humanitarian and social import than GWB ever even considered, but that promise was not borne out during his presidency.

    So, GWB as the “least popular, least successful president in modern history”? Maybe …

    Nanuq
    In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. — George Orwell

  • Nanuq, Bush didn’t act quickly after Katrina, invaded Iraq too quickly. A few people died as a result of those two. But the legacy of doing nothing in the face of global warming and doing nothing in the face of the housing bubble will have impacts as least as dire as the Great Depression. Hoover didn’t have the opportunites or the power to screw up as badly as Bush has.

  • Rove shouldn’t be allowed on the streets without the express, written consent of a therapist and proof that he’s taken his meds.

  • PAUL: “No, I would lose all credibility, because I’ve ran against his policies.”

    OK, score 1 for the Paulie’s.

    The guy is consistent, at least. Unlike everybody else in the race except Kucinich.

    I’ve said it before: if our political system worked the way it is supposed to, we’d be nominating Kucinich this spring and he’d be squaring off against Paul in November.

  • Very rarely do I actually wish ill on someone, but every time I hear the name of Karl Rove or see his piggish mug I can’t help but wish he’d just die. Are we to be plagued by his bullshit for years to come? Hasn’t he done enough damage in the years he had in the limelight (or under the rocks where he schemed for so many years)? Karl, please, for the good of the country, go jump off a bridge.

  • One of the big problems with those corporations that cook the books is that they have no real idea of how their business is doing. They know that the numbers are worse than they’re reporting, but they have no idea what the real numbers are. But financial numbers aren’t just to woo investors; they’re required for a business so they know how they’re doing, so they’ll know what’s helping them and what’s hurting them. So once these companies start cooking books, they get lost in a sea of confusion that they created themselves, and that makes it all the harder for them to get back on the right path and requires even futher number cooking.

    That’s exactly what Rove has done. He’s gone down so far into the rabbithole of his own creation that he has no ability to determine what the truth is, or even what direction he’s heading in. Sure, he knows he’s conning people, but he no longer has any ability to know what the truth was to begin with. He’s like a captain lost at sea who insists on going ahead at full speed under the assumption that he knew what he was doing when he last saw land.

  • Rove is just one more lying conservative scumbag, who will be drown out in the rightwing bullhorn. Kos will be writing from a POV not allowed in the MSM outside of Krugman’s column. If “Crossfire” is the only way to get a non-conservative view in the media, then, I say, let’s do it.

  • I think you’re reading Rove’s threat wrong. When he said if Republicans talk bad about the President, methinks he wasn’t saying they’d be punished by the masses who still love GDubs, but that they’d be punished by Rove, et.al. Hello NSA wiretaps!

    It was a mafioso type threat to keep the Candidates in line and with the Bush is great meme. They trash him and distance themselves from him at great personal threat. IMHO.

  • Rove is a genius, Benen. Many who disagree, like you, point out his few losses and near-losses as evidence. But think of Rove as a salesman, and then consider his product: George W. Bush. Rove, with his genius, was able to convince half the United States to vote for this chimpanzee.

    I’m reminded of a Far Side comic titled “The greatest salesman in the world.” It’s a single panel showing a salesman floating away from a community of Eskimos to whom he just sold refrigerators. In 2000 and 2004, Rove was able to sell approximately 50 million refrigerators to 50 million Eskimos. That makes him the greatest “salesman” in the world.

    As far as his recent comic statements, Bush is undergoing a political makeover in a desperate attempt to rescue his legacy. Rove is simply helping him out by running the play that says, “Look at Bush! He’s new and improved! And more satisfying! Get him while you can!”

    And about the recent attempt to claim the Democrats pushed Bush into Iraq when all poor ol’ Bush wanted to do was be patient and allow the inspectors to do their jobs, Rove is simply playing his most famous tactic modified, that being to take his opponent’s greatest strength and turn it into their greatest liability. In this case though, he’s attempting to take his party’s greatest liability for 2008 (the Iraq War) and pin in on the Democrats. Sure, it’s highly unlikely to work, but it couldn’t hurt to try. The election is a year off, so it’s prime time to start throwing crap at the barn and see what sticks. It’s the same way we went to war. About a year before the invasion, the Bush administration threw the crap at the barn about Saddam’s link to 9-11, indirectly of course. It didn’t stick. Then his terrorist ties. It didn’t stick. Then WMD. It stuck! He’s just exercising his tried and true play book.

  • “Nobody can risk looking disrespectful to the president without paying a price, and they need to understand that,” said Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush’s former top political adviser.

    A word to Karl Rove just shut up. If Bush got the kind of respect he deserved he be in prison for the rest of his life. That is the only kind respect Bush has earned. The Republicans has showed that they are incapable of running this country and do not have the right to be elected to any office.

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