What Will Be The ROVE LEGACY?

[doh_phooey]

[global1]

1. Lies, Lies, Dirty Tricks, And More Lies.......nt

[mediaman007]

2. It was never about the ideas a candidate had...

It never came down to liberal against conservative ideas. It was always a smear, a hatchet attack, fabricated information and election fraud.

Rove never allowed his candidate to go even up against anyone, so I suppose he can feel good about putting a pig with lipstick in office.

[aaronbees]

3. Death....

And in particular death to democracy. This is a something of a hollow victory seeing him walk out of town, but I'll smile a little more today because of it.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. That he made American politics more poisonous than even Atwater did.

That's saying something.

That he enshrined corruption, the harnessing of the entire apparatus of the federal government to partisan political goals.

[doh_phooey]

8. Atwater "confessed to his sins" in the end

Something I doubt Rove will ever do.

[Tesha]

5. Death and destruction.

The deaths of hundreds of thousands and the destruction
of the American democracy.

A pretty big legacy, no?

Tesha

[ThomWV]

6. If the Democrats had balls it would be PRISON

[Bitwit1234]

7. I couldn't agree with a post more..

[Vinca]

9. He was responsible for the election of the worst president

in the history of the United States and has as much blood on his hands as the rest of them.

[doh_phooey]

23. On that one he gets partial credit

The Supreme Court was his partner in that one.

[cgrindley]

10. Applying professional business and marketing strategies and analysis

to the political process. It's actually shocking that no one came up with it before. His most spectacular failure, however, his attempt to win Hispanic voters for the Republicans seems to have been utterly unforeseen. I suppose we're lucky that the immigration bill failed as we'll probably reap the rewards.

The weird point I'm trying to make is that the more rational and calculating the Rovian political process became, the more it ended up exposing the fundamental irrationality of the Republican grassroots base.

We would be well-advised to learn as much as we can from Rove and to put as many of his strategies into place as ethically feasible, but in the service of progressive values.

[moondust]

11. Wrecking the lives of millions. n/t

[NRaleighLiberal]

12. The infinite string of turds that he "blossomed". Poster child for ineptness and dirty politics.

[baldguy]

13. 3689 dead American soldiers

So far

[Virginia Dare]

17. Don't forget 9/11 and Katrina,

and all of the innocent Iraqi citizens who have died. Probably upwards of 500,000-1 million deaths, this regime is or will be directly responsible for.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

14. Hopefully a long prison sentence

If there's any justice, it will be a long vacation for Karl at Fort Leavenworth or some place similar.

[lonestarnot]

15. Death destruction and constitutional shredding.

[doh_phooey]

24. it's a small price to pay for freedom ...

Bush would say!

;-)

[IDemo]

16. As the Chimp Whisperer

He made partisan thuggery the new standard of behavior for politics, destroying whatever degree of actual discourse still remained.

[Virginia Dare]

18. ......

:thumbsup:

[WI_DEM]

19. successfully stealing the presidency twice and avoiding prosecution

[Wapsie B]

20. The ends justify the means.

If you can get away with it, do it. That'll be his legacy. And because he's leaving means nothing. There are countless more just like him in the gop ready to take his place. I thought there'd be no one like Lee Atwater out there. No, this one was worse.

[WI_DEM]

21. I like your visual, but what an insult to Laurel and Hardy.

[AnnInLa]

22. Wonkette's idea on his legacy:

www.wonkette.com

Karl Rove quits the White House after ushering in an unprecedented bipartisan era of good feelings and guiding the president to a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity. Cynical suggestions that some kind of criminal prosecution is in short order are unfounded and, if we may say so, completely reprehensible.

[doh_phooey]

25. Not the legacy he had in mind

Karl Rove will be remembered for two things from his time at the White House: incompetence and duplicity.

During the 2000 campaign, Rove was fond of saying that he thought of George Bush as today's William McKinley, the Republican who won the 1896 presidential election handily over the Democrat William Jennings Bryan. McKinley's victory ushered in an era of GOP dominance that lasted the better part of 35 years, until Franklin Roosevelt came along. Rove predicted that Bush's victory would do the same. The brains behind this paradigm shift, it went without saying, was Rove himself, who would be credited as the genius who kick-started a new era in which America embraced conservatism and fully and finally rejected anything having to do with the Democratic party.

Well, now. That's going well for him, isn't it?

Instead, Rove leaves two other legacies. They are incompetence and duplicity. It's hard to know which is worse. Actually, no it isn't. The duplicity has been worse, but let's emphasise here his incompetence, because it is operatic. As has so often been the case in America these last seven years, the facts are completely at odds with the cultivated image.

Let's remember first of all: Rove, and Bush, did not win the 2000 presidential election. Al Gore won the popular vote. Gore ran a mostly pretty bad campaign on the basis of mostly pretty bad advice. And still he won, by 500,000 votes. Were it not for a poorly designed ballot in one county in Florida - not whining; just pointing it out - that enticed many elderly Jews into voting for Pat Buchanan, Bush's defeat would have been clear. He and Rove would have been sent home and forgotten.

So Bush won the election in the supreme court. Well, that's the way it goes. We had to accept the court's verdict as a country and go forward. But the fact remains that Bush won that election by five votes, the five supreme court votes that installed him in the White House. Nothing Karl Rove did got him those votes.

continued --

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_tomasky/2007/08/not_the_legacy_he_had_in_mind.html

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

29. I couldn't find this paragraph at that link?

[doh_phooey]

26. Rove's Legacy (another article)

But upon his departure it begs the question, what is Rove's legacy? On the one hand, Rove has shown himself to be a brilliant political mind (the guy did elect George W. Bush to the Presidency twice after all), but that brilliance has been built on a rather dubious platform.

First, he helped Bush win in 2000 by running one of the most intellectually dishonest campaigns in modern American history. Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" and a "uniter, not a divider" who would "restore honor and dignity" to the White House. Instead he governed as a hard right and highly partisan conservative who made no effort to bring the country together. Fifty plus one has been their approach since day one.

The hyper-partisanship that defines American politics today is a direct result of this governing strategy, which of course was always much more about winning politically then running the nation effectively.

What's most amazing is that this extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and national security no longer even raises eyebrows. We've come to expect Republican leaders to do or say anything related to terrorism and national security if they think it will score them a political advantage. The result is that it's virtually impossible to have any kind of debate about the best means of fighting Islamic extremists. Once Dems sound any discordant note or warn that the tactics this nation is adopting need to be moderated they get hit over the head with attacks on their patriotism. Of course, it didn't have to be this way. Bush could have tried to work with Dems in fighting terrorism - but I suppose that wouldn't have been as politically expedient.

That in a nutshell is Karl Rove's legacy. Good riddance, indeed.

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2007/08/dont-let-the-do.html

[doh_phooey]

27. Rove, Master Of Disaster

Media Gushes Over Rove: ‘Superstar,’ ‘Boy Genius,’ ‘The Mastermind Behind Everything’

As soon as Karl Rove’s departure from the White House was announced this morning, there was no shortage of talking heads to appear on TV to lavish praise on him. On Fox News, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card called Rove “a superstar,” CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante described him as “the mastermind behind everything,” and on MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared “generally, where there’s brains, there’s Rove.”

While Rove is undoubtedly a skilled campaign tactician, the hyperbolic image of him as a political genius overlooks his record of bungled political predictions, a series of policy failures and the damage he has wrought on America’s political system.

ThinkProgress has put together a highlights reel of the breathless adoration for Rove. Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/13/media-gushes-over-rove

[blarbushie]

28. frogmarch Rove and friends

[mentalsolstice]

30. He raped an estimated 302,243,000... n/t

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

31. Actually Andrew Sullivan has it nailed down pretty well:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/08/rove-exits.html

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power - which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America's 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

[doh_phooey]

34. I guess there is a silver lining here

"The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited."

:)

[spanone]

32. shame, shame,shame

[Monk06]

33. Nicer smelling washrooms in the whitehouse. It will once again be safe to use Gov't email servers.

[doh_phooey]

35. So history will show Rove in a good light?

Rove legacy will improve in time

August 14, 2007
STEVE HUNTLEY [e-mail]

Bush's squeaker Electoral College win in 2000 and the GOP successes in congressional elections of 2002 and 2004. As the years go by, those achievements will loom larger in assessments of Rove than today. :puke:

Even today, Rove can bask in the economic glow sparked by the Bush tax cuts he helped engineer. We can only guess how much worse off the nation's fiscal health would be today if the tax reductions were not there as a partial vaccine to the housing market infection roiling the economy. :puke:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/508740,CST-EDT-hunt14.article

[doh_phooey]

36. Under Rove, U.S. paid hefty price

August 14, 2007

JESSE JACKSON [e-mail]

Karl Rove, the presidential adviser dubbed "George Bush's brain," has announced he will resign at the end of this month. Hold the applause. This master of back alley political tactics has been the architect of the worst administration in America's history. His very successes were catastrophic for the country.

George Bush was never much interested in history or in policy. He didn't travel widely or exhibit curiosity about other nations. His passion was politics. He was an acolyte of Lee Atwater, master of dirty tricks and race-based politics. And in Rove, he found his instrument, a man for whom political calculation overruled morality, policy or even the national interest.

Rove boasted that he would forge an enduring ruling majority for conservatives, yoking the wealth of the global corporations and banks with the troops of the religious right. He had his way. He helped steal an election in 2000. He used Sept. 11 for partisan purposes and he consolidated the right's hold in 2002 and 2004.

The result was catastrophic for the country. The policies that Bush and Rove pursued fed a Gilded Age of inequality and the worst corporate crime wave in history.

continued

http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/508783,CST-EDT-jackson14.article

[doh_phooey]

37. Rove's Legacy

The World According to Rove

In hindsight, it’s apparent that a combination of factors (shortsightedness, hubris, general mismanagement) led to his impending departure—and, by extension, to the harsh realities visited upon his fantasy.

Central to Rove’s audacious plan was the theory of electoral realignment, a notion of political science that identifies a fistful of decisive presidential elections as having yielded a lasting shift in ideology and voter loyalty. The 1896 election—in which William McKinley won the presidency (aided in no small part by his chief strategist, Mark Hanna, who exploited the nascent industrial economy to engineer a resounding and lasting victory)—was particularly instructive: Rove would use it as a virtual blueprint for how to build a modern-day Republican majority.

A key part of Rove’s strategy was to co-opt fundamentally Democratic initiatives—Social Security and education reform, for example—and use these to appeal to independent and undecided voters. (In so doing, he would also help the Republican Party pitch a bigger, better tent.) Another central tenet was that of executive mandate, which arrived—not a moment too soon for Rove’s purposes—in 2001, courtesy of 9/11.

It seemed to work for a while, with George W. Bush winning two general elections, and the GOP handily capturing a midterm. But Rove’s reading of history wasn’t quite right: What he didn’t understand (or perhaps understood too late) was that Hanna’s strategies, while fine for winning elections, were deficient on the policy front. What’s more, Rove’s governing tack was flawed: He eschewed coalition building (which worked so well for FDR vis à vis the New Deal) in favor of electorate splitting (focusing on, say, evangelicals instead of the Latino vote). As a result, Rove’s victories proved short-lived: Today’s Republican Party is in disarray, divided and imperiled; Bush continues to plummet in the polls; and Rove himself is abandoning ship.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200708u/green-interview

[doh_phooey]

38. evening kick

:kick: