Rove Remains Steadfast in the Face of Criticism --WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111101103.html?referrer=email


By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 12, 2006; A01



For a man still climbing out of the rubble, Karl Rove seemed in his usual unflappable mood...
The Architect, as President Bush once called him, has a theory for why the building fell down. "Get me the one-pager!" he cried out to an aide, who promptly delivered a single sheet of paper that had been updated almost hourly since the midterm elections with a series of statistics explaining that the "thumping" Bush took was not such a thumping after all.

The theory is this: The building's infrastructure was actually quite sound. It was bad luck and seasonal shifts in the winds that blew out the walls -- complacent candidates, an ill-timed Mark Foley page scandal and the predictable cycles of history. But the foundation is fine: "The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008."
The rest of Washington might think Tuesday's elections were a repudiation of Rove's brand of politics, but Rove does not. For years, he has been the center of hyperbolic attention -- called the genius, the electoral mastermind, the most powerful presidential adviser in a century, Bush's brain, the master of the dark arts of wedge politics, the Republican Moses leading conservatives out of the desert. The mythology grew to such an outsized degree that when Rove insisted again and again during the campaign that Republicans would win despite the odds, fearful Democrats convinced themselves that he must have known something they did not and waited for an October surprise to spring. Rove encouraged that with supreme confidence. "You are entitled to your math, and I'm entitled to the math," he told a National Public Radio interviewer who suggested Democrats might win.

It turns out that Rove is mortal after all, and not always so good at math. And his critics are crowing. If he tuned in to CNN or NPR last week, here's a sampling of what he would have heard about himself. (Followed by catty comments from GOP luminaries) In an expansive interview last week, Rove said that strategy was working until the House page sex scandal involving ex-representative Foley (R-Fla.) put the Republican campaign "back on its heels," as he put it. "We were on a roll, and it stopped it," he said. "It revived all the stuff about Abramoff and added to it."

The various scandals surrounding convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other ethics allegations, Rove said, had as much, if not more, to do with the defeat than the Iraq war. In Rove's analysis, 10 of the 28 House seats Republicans lost were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six, he said, were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the threat. That leaves 12 other seats lost, fewer than the 15 that Democrats needed to capture the House. So without corruption and complacency, he argued, Republicans could have kept control regardless of Bush's troubles and the war.

Staff writer Jim VandeHei contributed to this report.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Kkkarl should be doing his 'Kkkarl Math' in a federal lock up ,or

is that off the table too?Part of shrubs legacy will be this Misanthrope.

[atommom]

2. Admitting he's wrong has never been Rove's strength.

It's no wonder he and GW get along so well!

[soothsayer]

4. If he lived in reality he'd never leave the house, looking as he does

like an overgrown fetus

[northshore]

3. Karl Rove

One of the MANY reasons why we need to impeach Bush.

[INdemo]

8. I think Karl Rove will be gone within two weeks (or at least before Jan)

Why? Because Poppy Bush and Baker said so.

[unblock]

5. excellent! let's hope they keep playing that tired old tune

one we now know we can clobber!

[madmusic]

6. Stay the course, Rove, on your march to hell.

[neilepi]

7. If true, this means that Rove's analysis is flawed

"The building's infrastructure was actually quite sound. It was bad luck and seasonal shifts in the winds that blew out the walls -- complacent candidates, an ill-timed Mark Foley page scandal and the predictable cycles of history. But the foundation is fine: "The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008."

Even a brilliant marketer like Rove can only go so far in promoting a product (Bush and his regime) when the efficacy of that product, as measured by criteria such as effectiveness, honesty, trustworthiness and integrity is, at best, held into question and, at worst, disproved. In addition to specifics such as those mentioned in the article there has been a huge shift in the groundswell of opinion these last several years, easily measurable by the disastrous approval ratings of Bush and Cheney, for a great many reasons. IMHO it was this shift which pushed the 2006 election into the realms of unwinnability, by fair means or foul, and all that the specific situations did was to turn a victory into a landslide.

Some anti-Bush stuff