Maybe I'm missing something, but why is Karl Rove feared?

[Catholic Sensation]

Unless he orchestrated the attacks on September 11 in order to create national unity behind our idiot-in-chief, what record does this man have? Bush-Cheney lost in 2000. Big fucking deal, why do we fear that obese scumbag anyway?

[Dookus]

1. I agree...

I think people here give him WAY too much credit. He's not an evil ubermann. He's just a fat conservative guy. And considering how Bush has been taking the heat lately, he's not even particularly good at his job.

[eileen_d]

2. I have just the thread for you!

Bookmarked it yesterday... a Rove encyclopedia
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=341502

Now, do I need to let fear of Rove guide all of my decisions? No.

[onebigbadwulf]

3. Because-ah he's doin the Lordah's work!!

An' Jesus will rain fire upon your sinning hearts when nuclear war breaks out across-ah the world!

[Catholic Sensation]

4. Well I'm Christian, so I don't need to fear Jesus hurting me

:)

[saltpoint]

8. If you're a Democrat, or even a moderate --

- Republican, you have reason to fear Rove's dirty tricks. He's an underhanded weasel who serves his master and not the public interest.

He no more represents the teachings of Jesus than a dish of jackal slobber.

[Guava Jelly]

5. Because rove is a ruthless liar

He once planted a bug in his own office and blamed his opponent.
Rove will go to any length to win.
he is a nasty vile man

[saltpoint]

6. Because he's a nihilist pig.

From an early age, we learn to distrust people who cheat to win.

His smear job on McCain told me he was not to be trusted.

[Ready4Change]

7. When Kermit the Frog says something funny

Do you admire the frog or the puppeteer?

[Catholic Sensation]

10. So he's a liar, an asshole, and a puppet master

that still doesn't mean we should be afraid of him, his track record in serious elections isn't impressive. Bush needed James Baker to lie to the Florida board of elections to steal the Presidency in 2000, Rove simply lied repeatedly.

I know the Rove-bug story, I too own Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them :)

[togiak]

9. Because he is a genius

I know that they lost in 2000 but just barely. Getting GWB to only lose the popular vote by 500,000 is an amazing feat. They took a guy who decided to become an adult at the age of 40, one who never held a real job in his life, one who has shown no interest in anything remotely intellectual, one who had a history of reckless behavior, one who bankrupted every company he started...and turned him into a hard working honest everyman with a business degree and the acumen to go with it. He got him elected in texas twice, and got him elected president (or selected at least).

Rove has managed to shape the debate in this country for probably at least a decade to come.

Everytime you ask yourself, "how in the hell does Bush have an approval rating of 50%", Rove is the answer.

[Bunny]

12. Wow. Great Post!

and welcome to DU!:hi:

[Lori Price CLG]

11. Well, Rove is one of the world's most dangerous terrorists:

He orchestrated the coup in 2000 (Bush was too stupid for that), the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and spreading the term, 'al Qaeada.' Previously, bin Laden was merely a thorn in Clinton's side, one that Clinton contained (for the most part). Rove gave bin Laden a stage.

You can be sure the Rove terror team will not 'go' quietly, as Bush's poll numbers sink into the abyss.

-Lori

[mb7588a]

13. I wouldn't say genius.. but close.

Here's a useful thread from the other day:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1126323

[andym]

14. Rove is not as good as his mentor Atwater

Rove is not as good as his mentor Atwater. Atwater really did a job on Dukakis, who was actually one of the stronger candidates the Democratic party has put forward.

Rove managed to get Gore tagged as a "Pinnochio," but IMHO Gore did himself more harm by playing Goldilocks at the debates (too strong, too weak, and finally just right) than Rove did to him.

Now * has looked good to the public until recently, but i think 9/11 helped him much more than Rove has.

[Catholic Sensation]

15. yeah that's what i've been thinking

Rove is simply an overhyped anti-semite (my father quoted him to me in the New Yorker saying desparaging things about Jews). The hype preceeding him is unbelievable. Atwater was brilliant at what he did, but Dukakis did hurt himself by going into that tank. My mom said it looked like Snoopy in a tank.

[andym]

17. The tank hurt Dukakis, but ...

The tank hurt Dukakis, but that was thanks to Atwater. It didn't have much effect when it was first on the news. It was only in a GOP commrecial when it was juxtaposed with words indicating how "weak on National Security" Dukakis was that it really hurt. I also seem to remember Bush getting in a tank a short time earlier in the campaign. If so, it coud have been used to weaken the effect of Dukakis and the tank.

Dukakis did help make Atwater's job much easier by ignoring the attacks until it was too late.

[MurikanDemocrat]

16. Because he's evil, and the master of dirty tricks and sleaze

[VelmaD]

18. I have the ignominy of actually knowing Karl Rove

He was my Campaign Politics prof in grad school. He is a little petty vindictive man, which is why I don't like him personally. I don't fear him...I loathe him.

But what's worse is that he will do absolutely anything to win. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Anything. He makes no bones about this. He has absolutely no morals qualms about anything. The end justifies ANY means for him. He is an amoral slime-ball with the ethics of spore-mold.

But we shouldn't fear him. He's not worthy of fear. Little. And. Petty.

[Catholic Sensation]

21. what grade did you get in his class?

:)

[VelmaD]

28. Believe it or not...

I got an A. He couldn't have done anything else. I turned in all the assignments. I was the living definition of "in class participation". I never skipped a class. And if he had docked my grade because of my political philosophy the grad school I went to would have come down on him like a ton of bricks. (I went to the fairly liberal LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin.)

One thing about him...he did seem to relish the fights. He's a scrapper, never seemed happier than when he was mixing it up with someone. Hell, I might have gotten an A just because he found me entertaining. :shrug:

[kskiska]

25. In "Bush's Brain" there's a story

about when Rove and the Chimp arrived in New Hampshire for the primary. It had snowed and a friendly snowball fight broke out among Chimp's entourage and press. Once Rove got into it it turned ugly. He savagely lobbed snowballs and wouldn't let up, fighting to vanquish the enemy. He's a nasty, dirty man who'll stop at nothing to win. I have to wonder, though, what'll he'll do with his life once he goes home to Texas, hopefully in defeat.

[spooky3]

19. I fear anyone with power who will do ANYTHING to keep it.

[anti-NAFTA]

20. Because he's a genius.

The guy smears and stirs shit with such skill. He is the greatest propagandist since Josef Goebbels.

[PretzelWarrior]

22. because he was able to put lipstick on a pig

and get one of the most idiotic, oratorically challenged into a position to get the Suprem Court involved in the election.

They figure if he can do that....he can do anything. I absolutely think he has had some success partly by getting everyone to think he's smarter and more powerful than he is.

He's a courtier who maliciously does anything for the sake of and pursuit of power--results and people of the country be dammed. It won't play well this year.

[thelocalkgb]

23. He's feared because of his good looks

obviously

[genius]

24. 9-11 was a Karl Rove operation. Wake up. Watch the towers fall

There were pre-set explosives. You can see them going off as the towers fall. The Pentagon was not hit by a plane but rather by a cruise missile. If you look at the photos after it was hit, you won't find plane debris. Whatever flew into the Pentagon didn't have wings. Margie Shoedinger's death, Baxter's death, Jim Hatfield's death, Wellstone's death, Carnahan's death, JFK, Jr's death were also probably Rove hits. A lot of scientists, researchers, etc, are looking at this and wondering when the rest of America will realize how bad Bush is. Do you really think he's planning to let Democracy work in 2004?

[Blue_Roses]

26. he's a genius and a nuisance

Genius
He's the wizard of the West Wing, the most powerful political consultant ever, the maker of presidents, the destroyer of Democrats. But how did Karl Rove get that way? Take a little luck, a lot of skill, a few dirty tricks, and a quarter-century of hardball Texas politics, and it all adds up to genius.

by S. C. Gwynne


IN THE SUMMER OF 1989 A legislator named Terral Smith received a phone call at his Austin office from a young political operative named Karl Rove. The two men knew each other casually. Both were Republicans with rising political ambitions. Smith was a state representative. Rove was a political consultant who owned a small company that raised money by mail for candidates. He was calling to ask a favor. He had a friend from Midland he was trying to persuade to run for governor. He wanted Smith to give his client a little friendly coaching on the subject of criminal justice. Smith, who had been the chairman of the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in the state House of Representatives, said sure.

He arrived at the small conference room at a downtown Austin hotel, where the meeting was to take place, and Rove introduced his pupil: George W. Bush. For the next hour, Rove listened intently as Bush, who chewed a cigar and propped his feet up on the table, asked questions and Smith held forth. Smith recalls that Bush seemed confident, almost cocky, as though he had already made up his mind on many of the issues. For Bush it was just one of many such meetings; Rove had lined up a full day of issue briefings in the same hotel room.

None of this might seem noteworthy, except for one thing: There was absolutely no reason to believe, in 1989, that George W. Bush could ever be elected mayor of Midland, let alone governor of Texas. He had little going for him beyond the fact that he shared three fourths of a name with the president of the United States. He was a 43-year-old who had never quite lived up to expectations: a mediocre student, a failed congressional candidate, an entrepreneur in the oil patch who had had access to a large pool of East Coast capital and still had not made it big. He was a hesitant, often ungrammatical public speaker. He had once enjoyed a reputation as a party boy. Though that year he helped organize an investor group to buy baseball's Texas Rangers, it would be several years before he achieved success as the team's managing partner.

Karl Rove had an entirely different notion of George W. Bush. He saw Bush as the future leader who...


more...


http://www.texasmonthly.com/mag/issues/2003-03-01/feature2.php?586339034

[poskonig]

27. You're not missing anything.

I remember at the end of the 2000 campaign, Lehane threw the DUI story out there. The Republicans had Bush respond to it, at night, in front of a brick building to dozens of reporters. It made him look soooo guilty, and Gore made a last minute surge in the polls. If that horrible piece of PR is the work of genius, I fail to understand the word.

Too many liberals feel inferior and need to realistically perceive events.

[Hippo_Tron]

29. Karl Rove made somebody like Bush electable...

A looser who spent most of his life snorting cocaine and getting drunk who has no merits whatsoever, should not be able to win an election for school board let alone president of the united states.