Are the long knives out for Rove?

November 3, 2005

The WaPo ran a startling front-page piece today on internal White House discussions about Karl Rove’s future. Apparently, there’s a growing sentiment that it might be time for Rove to explore other opportunities.

Top White House aides are privately discussing the future of Karl Rove, with some expressing doubt that President Bush can move beyond the damaging CIA leak case as long as his closest political strategist remains in the administration.

If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to senior Republican sources familiar with White House deliberations.

While it’s amazing at face value that Rove’s White House colleagues are strategizing over his ouster, it’s equally amazing that they’re calling up the Washington Post to talk about it. Two weeks ago, we saw WH aides blabbing to the LA Times that Scooter Libby was a vengeful attack dog on an anti-Wilson crusade. Today, it seems the long knives are out for Rove, with several WH insiders explaining that Rove’s continued presence is awful for morale, in part because he lied to everyone, including Press Secretary Scott McClellan, about his role in the leaks.

And as if the flailing support of his colleagues weren’t enough, Rove is still very much in legal jeopardy.

While Rove faces doubts about his White House status, there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation of the Plame leak. The prosecutor spoke this week with an attorney for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about his client’s conversations with Rove before and after Plame’s identity became publicly known because of anonymous disclosures by White House officials, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.

Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove — who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff — said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime. […] Fitzgerald made it clear to Rove’s attorney in private conversations last week that his client remains under investigation.

The celebration in some conservative circles after last Friday came and went without a Rove indictment was, to put it mildly, premature.

And as far as the politics is concerned, the White House still can’t get around the basic fact that the president pledged to fire anyone involved with the leak. It just makes it easy for Dems to keep hammering away.

“It is totally unacceptable that anyone involved in the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer, including your Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, should remain employed at the White House with a security clearance,” Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) wrote Bush yesterday.

Republicans can hope these criticisms will go away, but wishing won’t make it so.

How come I’m not hearing Dem’s using the word that the Repugs would have already mentioned 5,554 times by now??? TREASON!
It is TREASONOUS to disclose the identity of an undercover operative of the United States Government, especially in a time of war.

SOMEONE leaked Plame’s identity. Whoever did it is GUILTY of TREASON. And it sure seems as if that person is Rove, Libby, and/or Cheney himself.

And if the WH denies it is any of these people, then who is it??? And how come the White House hasn’t explicitly shown more concern about this given the fact that we are at war??? Where is Homeland Security in all of this? If they are overseeing intelligence operations, shouldn’t Homeland Security be very concerned that CIA ops are being outed? Shouldn’t there be more outrage coming from the hawks in our government?

Despicable.

  • Treason or no, Karl Rove is supposed to be practically divine in the White House. If his underlings are dishing to the Post, he must be in pretty big trouble.

  • I am not surprised that they are considering forcing KR’s departure. It is a matter of self-preservation. Once you recognize a gangrenous limb, you must cut it off or die. But, to carry this metaphor a bit farther, you also try to make sure that what you are seeing is definitely gangrene. So we should not expect action too soon — besides, it is the surgeon and not the orderlies who make the decision, so these insiders can take no action absent W’s buy in. And since he is not necessarily the sharpest scalpel on the tray . . . .

  • Cheney-Rove-Libby-Addington-Hannah

    Program name: Repuglican Talking Points

    For i = 1 to 10000
    {
    printline “Not a conspiracy”;
    i = i + 1;
    return;
    }

  • Ok, wait a second. Scottie Boy is depressed because Rove lied to him? Is he trying to make us believe he’s so naive, out of the loop or just plain stupid that he really didn’t know what was going on, or that the constant litany of denials, deflections and outright lies he spews at every press conference aren’t the unvarnished truth?

    Or is he just trying to distance himself from the whole mess because it’ll be real inconvenient when he shops his resume around looking for his next job?

    We snark, you decide.

  • koreyel – There must be a runtime error somewhere and you’re stuck in an endless loop. By my calculations we exceeded the 10,000 parameter on the printline statement within one day of Libby’s indictment.

    And is that a C based language?

  • By my calculations we exceeded the 10,000 parameter on the printline statement within one day of Libby’s indictment…

    I haven’t the foggiest idea what any of you are talking about. I’m open to an explanation, though.

  • Programmers….gah……

    I think it means that for every time a Republican uses the phrase, “Not a conspiracy”, the program adds one number to the count up to 10,000. And Marcus is right, we exceeded that limit years ago. Does that help, CB?

  • Ooooh, how I love lists! Shall we start a list of Bushites who will now begin, one by one, to be wedged into a delicious corner and forced to resign, or, uh, be indicted? I know we have all had it up to our eyeballs after five years of these sickos f’ing with us, but I believe the criminal conspiracies are broader and deeper than even we (his mortal enemies) realize. I have concluded that sadly it taints all corners of our gov, military (big time) “intelligence/black ops” and for decades. Roots in Repub administrations, toss in a cup of costly aid/friendship with nutjob Israel, and serve immediately!

    Karl “forge those documents” Roverer, Andy Card, Condi Rice, Ken Mehlman (already gone, but highly culpable), Dan Bartlett, both lying press secretaries, John Hanna, Stephen Hadley, Rummyfeld, Tommy Franks, Tenet, Negroponte, Abrams, (i.e., all the usual sleazy suspects recycled from vintage Repub prez’s administrations), the twit Bush sent to screw the Iraqis by preparing the scene for American corps to rape and pillage; let’s not leave out Johnny “flush the Constitution” Ashcroft and Alberto “torture papers” Gonzales. Not technically IN the WH but guilty as hell, Grover “burn down the IRS” Nutquist. Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and yes, Miers advising her idol, George himself, in circumventing the law, the conventions of war, at least one treaty and our Constitution and in violating his oath of office. Ah yes, this OCTOPUS has many tentacles–read the book by that name, written by the late Danny Casolaro. It’s available to read, online. Oh my, almost forgot Karen “trample those protesters, officer!” Hughes and Joe “hide Georgie’s felonies” Albaugh. Any others?

  • Sometime soon, GWB will reluctantly accept Rove’s resignation, claiming that his own high ethical standards left him no choice but to cut his old friend loose.

    If he tries to get away with this, we have to call him on it.

    Is it noble to hand one’s wallet to a man who is pointing a gun at you? No, it isn’t, but it is the only sensible course of action under the circumstances. Similarly, we can’t allow GWB to turn the stench surrounding Rove to his advantage. There is nothing virtuous about saving one’s own butt.

  • Carpetbagger,

    Curmudgeon pretty well nailed it. An endless loop is an instruction to the computer that it keeps repeating over and over without an instruction to stop. Think of it in terms of the movie Groundhog day except that Bill Murray has to keep repeating the same day over again into eternity. Or maybe the Budhhist cycle of samsara would be a good equivalent.

    I just hope that we’re not stuck in an endless loop of Republican Hell.

    Jan L – Don’t forget Jack Abramoff!

  • It only makes sense that the rats are leaving the ship so 1). We won’t notice they got their orders from Cheney with the Bush Blessing and 2). They will be indicted, tried, sentenced, and pardoned before this term ends.

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