One interesting part of the Rove defense strategy is its similarity to the approach Rove used during the presidential election: Play to the base. When it was Bush on the campaign trail, that meant ignoring outreach to anyone who wasn’t a Republican, creating a partisan bubble around the president, and rallying the hard-core sycophants. The […]
Arnold Schwarzenegger has picked enough fights and been just incompetent enough to drive his approval ratings down and dim his re-election chances, but it’s recklessness like this that makes one wonder if he’s completely lost his mind. Two days before he was sworn into office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted a consulting job paying an estimated […]
Even though the White House refuses to comment publicly on the Plame scandal and Karl Rove’s involvement in it, the White House press briefings continue to offer some interesting comments. Yesterday, for example, Scott McClellan started feeling sorry for himself. Q: The Washington Times editorial page this morning published a cartoon comparing White House correspondents […]
Newt Gingrich may not be particularly athletic, but you, too, can watch with amazement as he moves goal posts while barely lifting a finger. June 2004: Q: Given — given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney’s discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months […]
Now here’s a name we haven’t heard for a while: Ari Fleischer. Bloomberg reported today (via Froomkin, Holden, Atrios) that our old friend Fleischer may play a role in the Plame scandal as well. Rove is not the only potential subject for Fitzgerald’s probe…. People familiar with the inquiry say Fitzgerald also is reviewing testimony […]
Let’s pause for a moment to take stock of the political landscape as it related to the Plame scandal. Dems on the Hill are expressing outrage and demanding hearings, the White House press corps is berating the press secretary during daily briefings, there are front-page articles running in the major dailies, Karl Rove is a […]
The fact that right-wing critics are leaping to Karl Rove’s defense is not surprising. The lengths to which they’re going to make things up is. The two myths I’ve seen the most often are the idea that Valerie Plame was not really an undercover CIA agent and that identifying Plame is legally permissible so long […]
There’s plenty of speculation about possible Supreme Court nominees and who various constituencies would like to see Bush nominate. But to get a sense of the kind of jurist the far-right GOP base is looking for, consider this: an hour ago, Alan Keyes, Howard Phillips, Stephen Peroutka, and other right-wing activists held a news conference […]
Boy, these circumstances sure sound familiar. [George W. Bush and Karl Rove] came together during young adulthood, when an ambitious former Texas congressman, George H.W. Bush, held the job of chairman of the Republican National Committee. It fell to the elder Bush to investigate allegations that Rove had used dirty tricks in a campaign for […]
Because I find the outrageousness of the Plame scandal so obvious, I’m fascinated by conservative defenses that have been launched in Karl Rove’s defense. Most of the arguments include some combination of misstatement of facts, trivia, and ad hominem attacks on Joseph Wilson. But for the real entertainment, one has to consider today’s editorial in […]