{"id":1733,"date":"2004-05-10T10:36:03","date_gmt":"2004-05-10T15:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1733.html"},"modified":"2004-05-10T10:36:03","modified_gmt":"2004-05-10T15:36:03","slug":"karl-rove-pays-falwell-a-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/karl-rove-pays-falwell-a-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Rove pays Falwell a visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bush svengali Karl Rove doesn’t make a lot of public speeches, so it was interesting that he delivered<\/a> his first commencement address of the year at a small school in Lynchburg, Va., called Liberty University.<\/p>\n

If you’re not familiar with the school, Liberty is the school that Jerry Falwell created and continues to run as its chancellor.<\/p>\n

President Bush’s chief political adviser told graduates of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University on Saturday to judge leaders on the basis of character. <\/p>\n

America needs people who have “the moral clarity and courage to do what’s right, regardless of consequence, fashion or fad,” Karl Rove said.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Rove, who said he never earned a college degree, was presented an honorary doctorate of humanities by Falwell for his “commitment to conservative ideas.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before the weekend’s ceremony, a Liberty press release quoted Falwell as saying, “I have known Karl Rove for many years and I am greatly impressed with his wisdom, dedication to President Bush and his love for Jesus Christ.”<\/p>\n

The speech itself was largely predictable campaign rhetoric, but that’s really not the point. What in the world was the president’s top political advisor doing hanging out with a discredited hack like Falwell?
\n
\nMy friends at Americans United expressed concern<\/a> that Falwell was offering a back-handed Bush endorsement by inviting Rove to address his school’s graduation ceremony. Barry Lynn said, “If the Rove appearance on Saturday turns into a Bush pep rally, I think it will raise concerns at the IRS. Liberty University is a tax-exempt religious school, and Falwell should not misuse it to push his partisan political agenda.”<\/p>\n

I think there’s something to this, but other concerns also came to mind. It seems to me the problem isn’t with Falwell endorsing Bush, it’s with Bush endorsing Falwell.<\/p>\n

Jerry Falwell is not just another nutty TV preacher. He is, to put it mildly, one of the most despicable people in American public life. Karl Rove, as powerful a conservative political strategist as has ever existed, shouldn’t be lending his stature by appearing in the same room as Falwell, worse yet appearing at his university and accepting an award.<\/p>\n

Let’s not forget that on Sept. 13, 2001, just 48 hours after the terrorist attacks, while most of us were putting aside our differences and coming together in unity to mourn, Falwell lashed out<\/a> at Americans — whom he held responsible for the murders.<\/p>\n

“The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this [attack] because God will not be mocked,” Falwell said. “And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad.” Falwell then launched into a hateful tirade against every group he is filled with rage against — religious minorities, abortion-rights advocates, feminists, gays and advocates of church-state separation.<\/p>\n

“I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen,'” Falwell said, summing up his vitriolic view of the terrorist attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Falwell has said equally nauseating things throughout his professional career. Virtually every line of decency that America values has been crossed, repeatedly, by Falwell.<\/p>\n

And yet, there was Karl Rove, Bush’s top aide, smiling alongside this lunatic, as if he were a respected and important figure. Far from repudiating Falwell and his hateful message, Rove was implicitly endorsing it.<\/p>\n

Could Rove be this worried about the evangelical vote in 2004? Is Bush’s support so precarious that Rove feels it necessary to sully himself by appearing alongside an anti-American demagogue? Apparently so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush svengali Karl Rove doesn’t make a lot of public speeches, so it was interesting that he delivered his first commencement address of the year at a small school in Lynchburg, Va., called Liberty University. If you’re not familiar with the school, Liberty is the school that Jerry Falwell created and continues to run as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}