Tag: Rove

Rick Perry’s an idiot, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that

Bruce Bartlett, former H.W. Bush Treasury official and Reagan adviser, minces words when asked his thoughts on Rick Perry. More evidence of Turd Blossom’s tentacles? Or just the party apparatus trying to help Perry out by appearing to denigrate his intellect while hedging bets against his inevitable defeat in a national election?
I’d say: A little from column A, a little from column B.

You don’t want these candidates moving so right in the Republican primary that it becomes impossible for them to win the general election, because it will become a self-defeating message in the primary.

People want to win. They don’t want somebody who goes so far to the extremes of either party that they lack a chance to carry a victory off in November.

Karl Rove, old turd blossom hisself, opining on the GOP Presidential primary field.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, Karl, but the “sensibility” ship has sailed, been round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames, and subsequently was no-bid auctioned into a second career as a part-time riverboat gambling operation for KBR executives.
John Huntsman even put his hand up on the “10:1 cuts/revenue is a non-starter deal” question and he’s only running for 2016 positioning. There is no one in the field even trying to be the slightly more sensible, slightly more center-far-right candidate of today’s GOP. Mittmentum, the man made to take up that role abandoned it in 2008. His strong showing then has sensibly pushed him even further to the right now. That ought to fix his issues. If the GOP can’t win the general election from a far right stance, they almost can’t win in 2012. And if the economic headwinds were a bit more predictable, we could drop the “almost” qualifier right now.
But the last thing The Democrat would want to do is start making the GOP take stands against job creation. People just don’t want to hear about that stuff right now. Shrill. Better take a “non-confrontational approach,” get into the defensive crouch, and hope for the best. And this is why they fail.

I lied about accessing all of the computers. I then admitted about accessing the computers, but lied about what I was doing. Finally, I admitted what I did

Joe Miller, Tea Klan nominee for Senate. This certainly speaks to his bona fides for high office; it’s always a three-stage cycle: lie, lie about the details of said lie, admit the first lie (and declare it old news). The article also details the fact that he’s a tried and true ratfucker in the Rovian style:

Miller went on three of his co-workers’ computers to vote in an online poll, apparently connected with his failed effort to oust Randy Ruedrich as state Republican Party chair. Miller then cleared his colleagues’ computer caches to erase his tracks, in the process clearing out their passwords and saved websites.

But why no whisper campaign about Ruedrich’s sexuality? Amateur hour.

Rove has spent his professional life engaged in political sleaze, so he’s accused Obama of adding “arsenic to the nation’s political well.” Rove ran a White House that embraced a “permanent campaign,” so he’s accused the Obama team of embracing a “permanent campaign.” Rove embraced the politics of fear, so he’s accused Obama of embracing the politics of fear. Rove relied on “pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted ” political events, so he’s accused Obama of relying on “pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted” political events. Rove looked at every policy issue “from a political perspective,” so he’s accused Obama of looking at every policy issue “from a political perspective.” Rove snubbed news outlets that he considered partisan, so he’s accused Obama of snubbing snubbed news outlets that he considered partisan. Rove had a habit of burying bad news by releasing it late on Friday afternoons, so he’s accused Obama of burying bad news by releasing it late on Friday afternoons. Rove questioned the motives of those with whom he disagreed, so he’s accused Obama of questioning the motives of those with whom he disagrees.

Steve Benen opines the being that is Karl Rove.
And it’s all true, but I’d say it’s also sadly beside the point. The real take-home on Rove isn’t so much that he’s a hypocrite or the political equivalent of sleaze incarnate, it’s that his shtick is treated so uncritically by the mainstream media. Yes, when you hear (and see) him “turned to” as some kind of a disinterested outsider (his chyron blurb usually says “Political Analyst”) on the subject of massive, anonymous campaign financing and how that’s affecting races across the country, and then have those ever-uncritical outlets then fail to mention that Rove, himself, is responsible for one of the largest and most powerful of these organizations, said organization dwarfing the contributions of the very US Chamber that he’s being asked about, well, that is journalistic malpractice. And it’s unsurprisingly coming from one of the “liberal” outlets.
And but so: The goal of Democratic messaging should be that there is no outlet Rove can be on, no microphone he can even approach, no studio he can inhabit without being regaled, and I mean regaled with questions he doesn’t want to answer or even have asked of him in public. That he can, does, and is a paid employee of the #1 cable news outlet shows you just how far The Democrat has to go in terms of messaging before any progress can even begin to be planned, much less realized.
And this is why they fail.

We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!

Karl Rove, as reported by Ron Suskind, “talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him.”
Filed under context.

Everything he’s saying is unfactual. He’s the same so-called political guru that predicted I wasn’t going to win. And we won, and we won big. So I think he’s eating some humble pie.

Christine O’Donnell referring to somebody named Karl Rove. I imagine this will go over well in the Hallowed Halls.

45 Seconds

Rachel Maddow touches on something critically important while discussing the GOP’s latest complaint: that Obama simply doesn’t use the word “terrorism” enough:

[Republicans are] lying in a way that can be obviously, demonstrably, embarrassingly proven by anyone who has a spare 45 seconds and the Google. When the people in the Republican Party who have the highest profile on national security say things that are easily, provably, flagrantly false, that’s a mistake. That makes it look like the party doesn’t know what it’s talking about a national security issues…. You guys, when you say President Obama doesn’t use the word terrorism, try to remember that when you say that, people are laughing at you.

That’s wonderful. Except that it’s easily, provably, and flagrantly false. First: The Conservative Media (and their beloved right-wing noise machine) still, still hews to the notion that the GOP is automatically and always the National Security Party. Cokie Roberts said so just the other day on that “liberal” bastion NPR. Everyone on-air agreed with her. Her comments and those of several others are what led to the creation of this handy guide. Second: The fundamental constituent for this sort of unsupported-by-facts nonsense is not someone who knows what “a Google” is, may think “the internet” is that Explorer shortcut on their desktop, and frequently worries that this time they’ve really missed their chance at riches from a mysterious Nigerian businessman who wanted to send all his money their way, just for a few days.

People are not laughing at the GOP, Rachel. You and I are. Unfortunately, we don’t really matter. The GOPers peddling this nonsense never had our vote to begin with. Low information voters, hell, no information voters are bathed daily in information- and context-free nonsense from Rush, FOXnews, Glenn Beck, talk radio, and 50 other sources. To them, these claims sound not only supportable but utterly reasonable and serious-minded. Google, if they even know what it is, doesn’t enter into the equation. Until Democrats internalize this and message accordingly, nothing will change. Until the media at large internalizes this and begins to challenge, immediately and on the spot, and embarrass into silence these asshats the instant this sort of statement emits from their fetid pie-hole, nothing will change.

This is what Karl Rove fundamentally understood: in the modern media environment, the truth doesn’t matter. The initial lie, no matter how quickly or decisively defenestrated it may be, is out there. And, just like Cokie’s Law states: if it’s “out there” we have to treat it as fact and discuss it. Repeatedly and without recourse to anything approaching helpful context. That’s what we call good, hard-nosed journalism.