A Tough Road Ahead for Rove
By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: November 19, 2006
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — Karl Rove, the top White House political strategist, is coming off the worst election defeat of his career to face a daunting task: saving the president’s agenda with a Congress not only controlled by Democrats, but also filled with Republican members resentful of the way he and the White House conducted the losing campaign.
White House officials say President Bush has every intention of keeping Mr. Rove on through the rest of his term....But serious questions remain about how much influence Mr. Rove can wield and how high a profile he can assume in Washington after being so closely identified with this year’s Republican losses, not to mention six years of often brutal attacks on the same Democrats in line to control Congress for the remainder of Mr. Bush’s presidency....
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Republicans on Capitol Hill said anger ran deep over Mr. Bush’s decision to announce the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld one day after the election instead of weeks before, when some say it could have kept the Senate in their party’s hands and limited Democratic gains in the House. Mr. Rove was among those at the White House who had argued that to announce Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation before Election Day would have been tantamount to affirming criticism that the war in Iraq was failing, according to officials familiar with the deliberations....More broadly, many Republicans say they blame Mr. Rove for failing to heed warnings that the war was hurting their campaigns, as the president and the vice president continued making the case for it on the stump....
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Republicans close to the White House say Mr. Rove has been arguing that the White House needs to shore up its standing with conservatives, whose support will be crucial to rebuild Mr. Bush’s popularity and ultimately give him some leverage.
Reflecting that strategy, Mr. Bush sent Congress a slate of conservative judicial nominees, which was taken as a provocation by Democrats who had previously rejected them. A close associate of Mr. Rove’s suggested that the strategy was first to placate conservatives, then tack to the middle to strike deals with Democrats on immigration reform or Social Security.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a close ally of Mr. Rove’s, said the best role for Mr. Rove would to be to help Republicans regain the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2008....But Republicans do not seem to be feeling like much of a team right now, let alone one that will look to Mr. Rove as its leader....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/washington/19rove.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=3d7666a9cf7533df&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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