Maybe My Last Rove Post

Of course I can’t let the resignation of Carl Rove go by without comment. I have referred to him a lot since I began blogging. So, rather than re-hash old material, I’ll just hit a few highlights.

1. Rove is not the genius he is credited to be. His ideas and methods were not new or innovative. His tools (secrecy, lies, cheating) are as old as the hills. He is simply a cunning backroom schemer whose plans were/are so unethical that they caught his opponents by surprise (that in itself is surprising given the nature of American politics). Even his big claim to fame – perverting the American system of electing our political leaders into a sleazy façade of pandering, corruption, election-rigging and vote-theft – has been done before, by both parties, more often than most of us would care to know. Of course, Rove had the audacity to take it to treasonous levels without remorse, but the important thing here is that his vaunted “genius” did not win the day. Not forever, anyway. Bottom line: not a genius, just so rotten that his peers thought only a genius could get away with that.

2. Rove’s grand vision of a permanent Republican majority fell down around him like a house on fire. I suppose he thought he could fool the public, for whom he and the Bush administration have demonstrated the utmost contempt throughout their reign, into thinking Republicans were morally above reproach, fiscally prudent, adherents of traditional Christian values and proponents of smaller, less intrusive government (I’ll continue as soon as you stop laughing). Now, certainly he (as a “genius”) must have been fully aware that Republicans were the exact opposite of all those things, morally, ethically, economically, & politically. So he must have thought he could build that permanent Republican majority either in spite of, or, even worse, because of, the despicable nature of Republican politicians. The “in spite of” option = stupidity, the “because of” option = evil. And that is the consistent hallmark of Republican politicians: you get to choose between stupid or evil (with the Texacutioner we got both). Either way, the “genius” failed miserably, for himself, his party, and his dark neocon masters.

3. Maybe being known as the “brain” of a “shit-for-brains” president is not such a good thing after all.