{"id":13540,"date":"2007-11-09T15:31:32","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T20:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13540.html"},"modified":"2007-11-09T15:31:32","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T20:31:32","slug":"rove-tees-off-on-nutty-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/rove-tees-off-on-nutty-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"Rove tees off on ‘nutty’ bloggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karl Rove may no longer be wreaking havoc in the West Wing, but he’s still managing to make provocative political comments. Yesterday, for example, during a speech about politics and the web in DC, the man the president affectionately calls “Turd Blossom” lamented<\/a> the “angry and vitriolic people” who now have “a voice in public discourse” thanks to the Internet.<\/p>\n

“People in the past who have been on the nutty fringe of political life, who were more or less voiceless, have now been given an inexpensive and easily accessible soapbox, a blog,” Mr. Rove said…. “I’m a fan of many blogs. I visit them frequently and I learn a lot from them. But there also blogs written by angry kooks.”<\/p>\n

Mr. Rove cited the results of a study that found that writers and commenters on liberal blogs such as DailyKos.com cursed far more than writers and commenters on conservative Web sites such as FreeRepublic.com.<\/p>\n

“My point is not that liberals swear publicly more often than conservatives. That may be true, but that’s not my point,” Mr. Rove said. “It is that the netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rove concluded that we may actually even be undermining democracy, because “the dark side of the Web can actually turn off voters.”<\/p>\n

It’s hard to know where to start with analysis that’s this inane, but let’s offer a non-kooky, non-nutty assessment of his misguided criticism.
\n
\nFirst, the notion that major liberal political blogs are somehow embracing “fringe” ideas is silly. The netroots are broad and diverse, but the vast majority of the leading sites offer ideas that enjoy broad support with the American public.<\/p>\n

Or, put another way, liberal blogs are pretty mainstream. Support for Rove’s former boss, however, that’s<\/i> on the fringe on political life.<\/p>\n

Second, if Rove is really worried about “angry kooks,” I can think of several dozen conservatives who fit the description. They’re all big fans of Rove.<\/p>\n

Third, if profanity is a genuine concern about the quality of our discourse, perhaps Rove can comment on Dick Cheney’s decision to tell Pat Leahy to “go f*** himself,” and then refusing to apologize for it.<\/p>\n

Fourth, it’s ironic that Rove is whining about arguing “from anger rather than reason,” given that it was Rove himself who insisted publicly that liberals in America are literally treasonous<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for the notion that somehow blogs<\/i> are responsible for turning people away from the political process, we have a long way to go before we catch up to the anti-democratic, sleazy tactics of Karl Rove<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* When Bush ran against Democratic Texas governor Ann Richards in 1994, Rove was connected to a rumor that Richards was a lesbian.<\/p>\n

* A former Rove staffer said that during the 1996 Alabama Supreme Court race, the campaign of Harold See — run by Rove — “initiated a whisper campaign” that See’s opponent “was a pedophile.”<\/p>\n

* “Political operatives” have charged that Rove orchestrated a “widely disseminated rumor that John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had betrayed his country under interrogation and been rendered mentally unfit for office.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rove concluded that he hopes liberal blogs keep doing what we’re doing because, he said, we help Republicans.<\/p>\n

I’d like to test that theory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karl Rove may no longer be wreaking havoc in the West Wing, but he’s still managing to make provocative political comments. Yesterday, for example, during a speech about politics and the web in DC, the man the president affectionately calls “Turd Blossom” lamented the “angry and vitriolic people” who now have “a voice in public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}