Rogue party: Rove is still the soul of the Republicans

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11888

Rogue party: Rove is still the soul of the Republicans
by Alan Bisbort | January 3, 2008


During national campaign seasons, it has been a longstanding American tradition to flood the media with ads and to bury voters under an avalanche of fund-raising mail. Once upon a time, these ploys were used to tout the positive virtues of candidates. In recent years, however, they no longer give a rat's ass whether a candidate is virtuous; they are all about demonizing the opposition.

Rather than offer a uniting vision to move the nation in a positive direction, candidates' ads and mail are vehicles by which the opposition is depicted as a loathsome beast bent on emptying prisons and lunatic asylums of killers, rapists and molesters, forcing kids to have sex in public schools and putting Americans in the path of a nuclear fusillade. In case you haven't noticed, we are entering one of those seasons.

You have Lee Atwater to thank for the sudden darkness you may be experiencing. Atwater, dubbed the Darth Vader of the GOP, was the master of "going negative," and he successfully guided gutter campaigns for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. His favorite ploy was spreading false rumors about opponents, forcing them to play defense. Atwater's "Mona Lisa" of dirty tricks was Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who, while on furlough in Massachusetts, committed a rape. The racist ad campaign Atwater devised with Horton — suggesting that menacing black men would soon be lurking in America's backyards — was enough to nudge reluctant voters into the Bush column. (Believe it or not, the studiously inept Dukakis had a 17-point lead in the polls prior to the ads!)

Is it any surprise to learn that Atwater was a mentor to Karl Rove?

To Atwater's credit, he realized what he had done as a political hack was wrong. In 1991, while in the last throes of a fatal brain disease, he wrote in Life, "My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. ... It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime."

Neither Rove nor Bush Jr. will be visited by such a road-to-Damascus moment. Karl Rove is Lee Atwater without a conscience. Called Bush's brain, he's more like Bush's bowels. And, though we may have thought we'd evacuated Rove from our own bowels when he resigned in disgrace earlier this year, he is back to his old tricks.

I recently came into possession of a RNC fund-raising letter for 2008. The screed was signed by Rove. In all likelihood, Rove simply lent his name to the letter, after proof-reading it to make sure it contained the proper doses of fear, loathing and lies. Nonetheless, because the letter perfectly encapsulates everything that is pathological and wrong with the GOP, it shows that the Republican "brand" still has Rove's jowly face on it.

The letter is four pages of the thinnest gruel imaginable. It uses the same hackneyed buzz phrases ("Republicans share your values and principles; Democrats have a Liberal philosophy that's increasingly out of touch with mainstream America.") And it presents a vision of fear, divisiveness, anger, venality. Who knows? Maybe Rove is right. Maybe he has a Satanic gift for knowing how far America has fallen from grace.

Indeed, if Americans fall for Republicans again in 2008, it may be too late for even brotherhood to heal our wounds.

or what's inside of them anyway.

for life. Karl Rove is a pig fucker of the worse sort.

I work as a letter carrier, so I see a lot of stuff go through the mail. A couple of months ago a simple envelope, and the return address just listed Karl Rove on the back with a Washington address. I really wanted to "lose" this trash, but I couldn't risk my job. I really wondered what tricks he was up to, though. And even though he has supposedly quit, is he still on the public payrolls. That man disgusts me and he should be in jail. He has no conscious.

Do you remember the bulge in the back of Bush's jacket during one press conference or public appearance? It was some sort of voice box/transmittor that was supposed to help Bush come up with a coherent thought, but the little piggy voice wasn't working and he stumbled and gaffed as usual. I think they've miniaturized the little piggy Rove and shoved him up the ass of none other than Mitt Romney. He's a bit too stupid and dull witted to come up with any response that hasn't been poll tested but with a little Karl Rove up his ass, he could say and stand for any bullshit thing the Republican party wants him to say. He's the perfect mannequin/puppet who wants to be a real boy, in the sort of outdated Reaganesque 50's sitcom sort of guy that they hope is a "Cool" representation of their party facade. Karl likes wallowing in shit and probably feels right at home, especially if someone tall with waxy hair and well practiced gestures can be his mouthpiece.