I can just imagine Karl Rove turning on the cable news stations yesterday, hoping to gauge how well his week-long offensive in defense of the war in Iraq is going, and finding that the only thing anyone wants to talk about is a crazed TV preacher — and close Bush\/Rove ally — who’s created an international incident.<\/p>\n
As far as the GOP and the Bush Machine are concerned, Robertson has not only created a mess for himself by calling for Hugo Chavez’s assassination<\/a>, he’s taken the news cycle off into a different and unhelpful direction. Rove hates it when his guys are off-message, but when your base is mentally unbalanced, message discipline is occasionally too tall an order.<\/p>\n Unable to think of much of a defense, Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network haven’t had much to say. There was one response<\/a>, early on:<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for the Christian Broadcasting Network told the BBC: “We are at a time of war and Pat had war on his mind when he made the comments.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How terribly persuasive. There’s a war in Iraq, there’s a war in Afghanistan … and Robertson hates to see Venezuela get left out. Yeah, that ought to placate his critics.<\/p>\n One of the more entertaining unintended consequences of this farce is that Robertson has helped Chavez tremendously<\/a>. <\/p>\n “This is pure gold for Chavez,” said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, who served as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry and played a central role in starting economic reforms in the early 1990s. “He could not have wished for anything better to happen.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Chavez is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. When a politically-influential American, who’s closely allied with the president and the president’s political party, goes on national television to declare that “we have the ability to take [Chavez] out and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” it’s like a gift-wrapped present. Bernardo \u00c1lvarez, the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, said: “Mr. Robertson has been one of the president’s staunchest allies. His statement demands the strongest condemnation by the White House.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Congratulations, Pat, you’ve strengthened<\/i> Chavez’s hand on the international stage.<\/p>\n
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\nAfter all, Venezuela knows<\/a> that Robertson is not just some guy.<\/p>\n