Posts Tagged ‘Karl Rove’

Time for the Sword

Thursday, March 28th, 2019

Time for the Sword

In the wake of the Mueller report, with the revelation that just as the President had maintained all along, there had been no collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia, a whole chorus of voices has suddenly erupted on the Republican side to tell President Trump to “let it go.” Notable in representing that position has been the detestable Karl Rove, who urged President Trump to “move on” and focus on attracting middle-of-the-road voters who wouldn’t like to see this continue, in an article published in the Wall Street Journal.  As for his loyal base, who knew it was all a hoax, he’s supposed to ignore them, according to Rove and other Swamp-dwellers.  I might be inclined to use different terms in a moment of intemperate frustration, but the answer to that proposition must be “no.” There must be a reckoning here, and it must be carried out with a zeal seldom seen in Washington DC.  Justice has been perverted for more than two years, really, much longer than that, stretching back through at least the whole of the Obama administration, and as I suspect, back into the Bush era, and likely all the way through to the Clinton administration in the 1990s.  If you want to know why Rove and the rest of the Uni-Party players want this shut down, it has nothing to do with getting moderate voters’ support.  It has everything to do with saving their own skins.  The truth is that Lady Justice must be loosed on the lot of them if we’re ever to drain the swamp, and President Trump must make it entirely clear that now is the time for her sword.

It’s not as though the required clean-up needs to be the only thing on President Trump’s agenda, but I also believe it’s fair to say that if he to keep his promise to “drain the swamp,” an area where he’s had only token success, he’s going to need to let the sword fall again and again on the entire treasonous cabal that conspired to deny him the office, then to confound his presidency, and finally to remove him entirely.  The problem is that this cabal had elements in the previous administration, and it had elements that were part of the large permanent bureaucracy, a.k.a., the “Deep State,” but it also had elements who were part of his own party and its extended branches of the DC Uni-Party.  It is that segment of the Republican establishment from which you will now hear the calls to “move on.” We should have learned long ago that Rove and those like him offer conservatives only beatings, but never victory.

They can’t afford for the truth to be known about their complicity in attempting to overthrow Donald Trump.  They know that if he digs very far, and if he turns over a stone or two, it won’t be only a passel of Democrats and corrupt media types that the president will uncover.  Instead, what he’ll find is the whole dirty mess of them: Democrats and Republicans; Government officials and media outlets; deep-state bureaucrats and plants within his own administration.  In short, he will find that the corruption in Washington DC is so thorough that he’s going to need more than a sword, or several of them.  He’s going to need to clear-cut the whole place.

Naturally, there are several things President Trump has at his disposal.  One is his Attorney General, and all of the investigative and prosecutorial ability that is explicitly the province of the Department of Justice.  Another powerful tool he has at hand is the power of declassification.  He can simply start exposing the “Deep State” and all of its players by simply making public what has been classified previously, often with the sole purpose of preventing embarrassment or criminal exposure of employees and officials who would otherwise be forced to answer to we, the people.  There are other less obvious means the President may employ, and while I’ve mentioned these before, I think it’s time that President Trump begins to really think through how to drain the swamp in a meaningful and thorough manner.

President Trump can break up the swamp.  Part of the problem with Washington DC is that it concentrates the whole of the Deep State in one camp, where they can collude and conspire and carry on without reference, never mind respect, to the orders of those elected and appointed over them.  The President should begin immediately to decentralize our Federal Government’s offices, for the sake of National Security – in order to avoid our government having all its eggs in one basket – and for the good health and order of the Federal Government.  He should leave only a very small liaison office in place in the District of Columbia.  Everything else should be moved out to the several states, and he should use National Security as the excuse.  In order to further drain the swamp, he should order that due to the dire risk of having all our eggs in one basket, the government will not be paying relocation allowances for employees, so they either move at their own expense, or they look for work elsewhere.  This single action would absolutely wreck the swamp.  The moaning and groaning would be loud and exhausting.  Tough.  This is what you get when you attempt to overthrow the president elected by the people you allegedly swore an oath to serve.  Besides, people in the private sector lose their jobs to relocation of plants and offices routinely.  More, they often lose their jobs because some government regulator comes along and makes a rule that puts them out of business, often arbitrarily or capriciously. Again, tough!

You might claim this is “mass punishment.”  It’s a privilege to work for our government – not a right!

The President must immediately begin the process of loosing Lady Justice.  Otherwise, his presidency will be mooted, and he will never be able to get anything done anyway, so what was the point of his presidency?  President Trump shouldn’t take advice from Karl Rove or any other swamp-rat.  His loyal supporters who stood by them against the ridicule and torment of the two years of hoaxing deserve justice too.  No, Rove is speaking for the swamp.  He IS the swamp.  It’s time for justice Mr. President, and it’s damned-well time for the sword!

Editor’s Note:  A local Talk-show host in the DFW area began a petition on the Whitehouse site to get the President to deal with the Swamp. See it and sign up here.

 

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Deep State, Donald Trump, Ethics, Featured, Justice, News, Politics | 2 Comments »

Unelected, Unaccountable, but Unrelenting: The Failed GOP Consultancy

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

Great & Powerful Turdblossom

It seems like a day doesn’t elapse without catching a glimpse of Karl Rove and his whiteboards on FoxNews.  From the sounds of things, you might come to think he’s in charge of something at the GOP.  Unfortunately, while he holds no official office, he’s always working on behalf of his patrons in the party, and he serves the interests of the surrender-monkey wing of the Republican party.  Steve Schmidt, the architect of McCain’s loss in 2008, is another example of the sort of consultant with which DC Republicans seem to surround themselves.  Schmidt is still bitter over his 2008 defeat, and he blames much of it on Sarah Palin.  The truth is that she was the only good thing about the ticket, and exit-polling demonstrated quite clearly at the time that McCain would have done far worse without her on the ticket.  It was Schmidt’s bright idea to have McCain suspend his campaign, and that was precisely the root of the collapse in McCain’s support.  Looking to blame his own strategic failings on somebody – anybody – Schmidt is still on the Palin-hater bandwagon because to regain any credibility in his profession, he must shift blame to somebody else.  These consultants are one of the biggest problems grass-roots conservatives face because they tend to turn candidates against their base, and wonder why they lose.

In an epic rant for Politico, McCain adviser and professional boot-licker Steve Schmidt claimed to feel “deep regret” for helping to fuel the creation of a “freak show” wing of the GOP.  By “freak show” wing, he means you and I.  He means real conservatives.  He is referencing those who rose under the general label of “Tea Party.”  Most of all, in singling out somebody that personifies what he termed “asininity,” he means Sarah Palin.  Said Schmidt:

“For the last couple of years, we’ve had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party. Tossing out terms like RINO saying we’re going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party,” Schmidt said. “We’ve lost five U.S. Senate seats over the last two election cycles. And fundamentally we need Republicans, whether they’re running for president, whether they’re in the leadership of the Congress, to stand up against a lot of this asininity.”

“You finally you saw it with Ted Cruz. Maybe he was the one that who’s got a bridge too far,” Schmidt said. “Maybe we’ll start seeing our elected leaders stop being intimidated by this nonsense, have the nerve, have the guts to stand up and … to fight to take conservatism’s good name back from the freak show that’s been running wild for four years and that I have deep regret in my part, certainly, in initiating.”

Psssst. Hey Steve! We should purge you from the party, since there seems to be no other way to have you shut up and go away.  Massive failure doesn’t seem to convince you.  Frankly, the reason Republicans lose elections is because they listen to jerks like Schmidt who view actual conservatives as the problem.  You see, Schmidt doesn’t recognize actual conservatism, but instead views “conservatism” as a label to be shifted onto his clients who in no way match the meaning of the term.  If one wishes to see this at work, consider only the Bush campaigns of 2000 and 2004.   Here, you had Rove positioning Bush as a “compassionate conservative,” when it was evident(or should have been) that Bush wasn’t conservative, and that he would wreck actual conservatism by the false association.  In 2006, when Republicans lost the Congress, it was on the basis of this bastardized notion of conservatism.  The Republicans lost control of Congress because under Bush, they were spending just like big-spending Democrats.  It had been consultants like Schmidt and Rove who led the GOP to that and subsequent defeats.

If you want to know what constitutes a real freak-show in the Republican party, it is the unparalleled spectacle of hucksters in the consultancy class attempting to pass off moderates as conservatives.  It is the inglorious pinnacle of asininity to pretend now that John McCain is conservative, and even more galling to pretend that his policy positions represent conservative principles, and yet con-men like Schmidt labor endlessly to carry out that fraud.  When McCain was up for re-election in 2010, you may remember that the McCain camp had no problem soliciting the help of Sarah Palin, but now they betray her with this nonsense about “freak show” and alleged “asininity.”  McCain might have been beat in the 2010 primaries without her, but does that fact earn even the smallest bit of respect from a hateful little troll like Schmidt?  No.   You see, in his book, it’s all about him.  Admitting that Sarah Palin did more to boost either McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, or his 2010 Senatorial re-election campaign would be to admit that Schmidt is entirely useless, never mind the candidate in question.

The fact of the matter is that Schmidt and those in the consultancy class like Rove, who infamously once claimed that Palin’s endorsement wasn’t “worth snot” don’t have any credibility.  For all their alleged gifts and talents as political analysts, advisers, and consultants, they don’t seem to have produced results to scale of their fame.  Bush barely managed to prevail over Al Gore in 2000, relying on the electoral college, and in 2004, what should have been a walk-over victory was uncomfortably close against John Kerry, a man who should never be let near the oval office.  Worse, under the guidance of Rove, in 2006, Republicans lost the Congress, permitting Barack Obama to have both Houses in 2009.   We wouldn’t even be talking about Obama-care had the Republicans not joined Democrats in spending like drunks in support of the George W. Bush spending priorities, which had been massive.

It was the participation of Republicans like McCain in the Amnesty kerfuffle of 2007 that helped keep the Republicans in the wilderness too, another great idea from the consultancy wing of the party.  How did that work out for us?  Democrats kept control of Congress, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid made sure we’d have Obama-care so we could learn what was in it.  We’re learning, and the real lesson we conservatives must take is that these professional beltway consultants and advisers are leading us off a cliff.

There’s no way around it.  If we listen to the likes of Schmidt or Rove, we’re taking advice from people who don’t have our interests at heart.  They’re profiteers on the political process, and they ply their trade by linguistic manipulations.  It’s no surprising that they work hardest to protect their own images, and will stab anybody in the back in order to preserve their own reputations.  In the end, they’re only accountable inasmuch as their political patrons are held accountable.  They aren’t elected, and they never pay the price for shafting the American people.  They are insulated from our direct anger as voters, and they always seem to move on to new patrons if their existing ones fall out of favor with voters.  As long as they’re setting the direction of the Republican party, one shouldn’t expect that the GOP will be friendly to actual conservatives.  They don’t care about our principles, as they pursue profit and power at our expense.  If the last decade has taught us anything, it should be that it is we who are forced to pay for their failures.  Noticing that fact will brand you as part of a “freak show.”

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Sarah Palin, Tokyo Rove | 2 Comments »

The Moral Depravity of Triumph by Default

Saturday, July 27th, 2013

Don’t Worry, It Will Collapse!

Observing the fight within the Republican Party over funding Obama-care, one might come to understand how thoroughly broken is the moral state of so many politicians.  One might also begin to grasp the fullness of the amoral position of political advisers and analysts, who help to shape the debate while bearing none of the consequences for its outcome.  The proposition advanced by Karl Rove and the hapless congressional Republicans who drink his brand of kool-aid is that threatening a government shutdown over the funding of Obama-care is dumb, since in their expressed view, it will somehow “collapse under its own weight.” I wish to direct your attention to the ethical position of this group of moral defaulters, and what it says of their view of fellow Americans, even if we take them to be sincere: They are willing to see billions or trillions of dollars wasted in order that the program will “collapse on its own.”  There is a certain cowardice attached to this sentiment, but more, it speaks to a deep depravity that is part and parcel of their notion of governance: They wish for you to believe that “triumph” may be had by a moral default that will destroy the lives of millions.

Naturally, given the advocates of this position, one is right to wonder in the first instance how sincere they may be.  After all, it is not exactly a state secret that many of these Republicans and their puppet-masters will make out like bandits from the implementation of Obama-care.  If the program collapses in the end, it won’t matter because it will have been during the implementation phase that they had made off with the loot.  Contracts of every description are being made between the federal government and vendors, so that a huge sum of money is flowing directly from the Treasury into the hands of cronies who are filling their pockets with cash.  Not nearly all of those cronies are Democrats.  For this reason alone, it is wise to suspect the sincerity of Rove and others like him who wish to continue implementing Obama-care on the basis that its collapse is allegedly nigh.

Taking them at their word, momentarily, let us imagine that they’re clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.  Let us imagine that they’re not filling their pockets with as much Obama-care implementation cash as their pockets and the pockets of their friends can hold.  Let us further stipulate that they may sincerely believe that Obama-care is so obnoxious to liberty and so burdensome to economic prosperity that it will be crushed under its own weight.  Even if this is so, what can one say about the moral depravity of a person who stands aside as a children play with matches having doused themselves with gasoline?  Is it possible to later claim that one hadn’t possessed some responsibility to intervene and to stop the certain disaster?

If and when Obama-care “collapses under its own weight,” I suspect this crowd will show up on television to gloat and to proclaim themselves “right.”  It will be an empty victory dance to be sure, since along the path from the passage of the Affordable Care Act to the supposed collapse, trillions of dollars will have been wasted on implementing a bad idea, trillions of dollars in economic activity will have been suppressed, and real people will have their lives shattered or ended if they happen to lose life’s lottery and come to need substantial health services during the period Obama-care remains in effect.  How many tax-payers dollars will have been squandered?  How many people will endure extended, protracted poverty because they were unable to obtain full-time employment because companies will restrict workers to twenty-nine hours per week?  How many will run head-long into those death panels Sarah Palin predicted while her critics chortled, only to later admit that rationing is a primary goal of Obama-care?  How does one perceive victory in any of this?

When Senatorial lemmings like Richard Burr(R-NC) suggest that Mike Lee’s(R-UT) intention to fight Obama-care by de-funding it even at the cost of a government shutdown is the “dumbest idea” he’s ever heard, what one can detect in his further explanation with laments about 1995 is the pulse of a coward who hopes to escape the difficulty of taking a solid position, instead hoping to win by default.  This man and all those like him, including Rep. Tom Cole(R-OK) hope to avoid controversy and avoid any political blame, but I must demand that they take the blame for failing to stop what they admit they already know will be a catastrophe.

I blame each and every Republican, whether elected or instead part of the consultancy class, because these alleged “leaders” who by their own statements on the terminal estimates of Obama-care, know full and well that it is a calamity.  By standing up and being counted now, they could help the country to avoid the grotesque spectacle of a health-care law that is certain to fail and cause untold suffering for millions, perhaps tens of millions, but they are not haunted into action by the ghosts of their future victims.  This disease that pervades Washington DC and its professional consultancy permits them to imagine they will be insulated from judgment, but every American, whether they had supported Obama-care, or instead like the vast majority who opposed its passage and implementation will have known or ought to have known that these default-merchants are really amoral merchants of death.

There is no moral abstention possible in a matter in which the lives and financial futures of three-hundred million Americans are at stake, and the outcome is already known.  They claim to sincerely believe that it will collapse, but even if we imagine that they are not filling their pockets from the mad scramble to implement this program, these people claim to understand what a disaster the Affordable Care Act will be, so that they have a responsibility to act. Instead, what we get from these political cowards and opportunists is a dance of default, hoping to celebrate on the ashes of a program that will have destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth for average Americans and prematurely ended the lives of so many who need not have gone to their graves so soon.  When I see the grinning face of the rotund, balding and bespectacled carnival-barker on FoxNews, holding up his whiteboard while advocating the acceptance of an onrushing disaster we should have avoided, I know I am seeing the Devil incarnate, because what he demands that we accept is a vast slaughter of Americans and their wealth so he can later claim: “It told you so.”

“Winning” by that sort of default is no victory.  If conservatives wish to take the moral high road, we must first discard this shoddy notion of “triumph by default,” deciding instead to fight against this as the last living defenders of ourselves and our fellow man, knowing that if it does collapse under its own weight, Obama-care will crush the lives of millions.  Worse yet, what will the wreckage be if it doesn’t collapse? Rove and his acolytes never answer this question, but it is one we must confront as we consider his advice.  If the road to Hell is paved with allegedly good intentions, then the speed at which we travel down it will have been determined by our own moral default.

At the end of the road, you may pass a welcoming man with a whiteboard.

 

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Congress, Featured, GOP Establishment, Healthcare, News, Obamacare, Politics, Sarah Palin, Tokyo Rove | 5 Comments »

Establishment GOP Abusers and Their Willing Victims

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

Will We Take Another Beating?

We ought to become acquainted with how we conservatives must appear to GOP establishment politicians, analysts and strategists. At every instance of their serial abuses of the grass-roots, conservatives “go wobbly” and buckle, ultimately returning to the fold. They know how to pull at our heartstrings and seize on our desperation in order to get us to back down from our outraged, uppity high horses. They play the loyalty card, the race card, the poverty card, and anything else they can contrive in order to convince us to return their waiting arms in order to comply with their wishes, but it’s the whip they hold to which we ought pay more attention.  They don’t see us as equals, but as a herd of inferiors to be managed, and in order to do so, sometimes they recognize the need to grovel a little.  It should sound familiar to conservatives any time they listen to the latest establishment attempts at re-framing their disgusting behavior into something born of the “best intentions.” Just like serial domestic abusers, the establishment always make a rationalized, dishonest appeal in order to avoid charges of abuse, and just like the real victims of domestic abuse, we conservatives keep going back when they offer their excuses:

“I didn’t mean any offense. I didn’t want to hurt you.  It was all just one big confused misunderstanding.  I’m sorry you took my actions as a sign that I meant you harm.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Can’t we just get along and make it all better?  We can seek counseling.  I’ll enroll in AA!  You know I really love you, and I only do these things because I love and need you so much. I didn’t want you to make the choices you did because I only wanted to protect you[from yourself.] Baby, this will never, ever happen again.”

Of course, that’s what they say, but it’s not what they mean. For example, Karl Rove is trying to undermine Iowa Congressman Steve King in any attempt to run for Senate in the next election cycle, and  he’s happy to point to dishonest statistics about King’s re-election campaign in 2012.  What Rove won’t tell you is that King’s re-election bid was as narrow as it had been because Democrats made his district a priority, dumping millions of dollars of anti-King advertising into the district.  As Mark Levin pointed out during the second hour of his Friday show, Rove wasn’t satisfied with mere distortion when availing himself of the podium of Sean Hannity’s radio show.  Instead, he resorted to outright lies. Here’s audio from Dr. Levin’s show:

Alternative content


This process by which the establishment wing of the GOP attacks grass roots targets should seem familiar to readers. It should also sound familiar to anybody who has ever worked in law enforcement, social services, or even listened to a few tapes of 9-1-1 calls.  Millions of women and not a few men have lived through the self-imposed nightmare of returning again and again to an abusive spouse(or significant other) in order to retain some semblance of normalcy and predictability in their lives.  They just want the beatings to stop.  They just want it to end, but so desperate to hold onto some part of their lives, they frequently return for another dose, often ending in tragedy.  After all, haven’t we conservatives behaved with freakish precision like sufferers of what had been known formerly as “battered wife syndrome?” Do you doubt me? Imagine Karl Rove in a plain-white sleeveless undershirt.  You get the picture.

Many people ask the obvious question about battered spouses: “Why do they keep going back?”  If you’re a member of the Republican party, but also a conservative in principle and philosophy who has become annoyed or offended by the direction of the GOP,  it’s time for you to ask that same question of yourself.  Some will say I have been too crass in posing such an analogy, but I think it’s fitting because it seems to me that when it comes down to the point at which rational people would flee for the sake of self-preservation, too often, we stop and return to the scene of the abuse, knowing what must be coming eventually, despite all the promises of reformation. We’ve heard the rationalizations:

“It’s better now.  Fault has been admitted, and we’re seeking counseling, and I’m treated much better now.”

All of these are preludes to the real confession of helplessness that follows:

“Besides, what else was I going to do? Leave? Where would I go? What would I do?  Better to stay put.”

With respect to the Republican Party and its miserable, corrupt establishment, who among conservatives hasn’t contemplated some version of these notions in order to trick themselves into holding the nose and walking back in to the booth to pull the lever for the GOP’s preferred candidates?  Right.  Me. You. Virtually all conservatives have gone through this one or more or even dozens of times, and each time, we knew with virtual certainty what would be coming: Another attack by the establishment on the grass-roots, or another surrender by party leadership to the leftist agenda would soon be in the offing.  Once the electoral objectives are met for the cycle, we and our issues are discarded and off we go with the next Republican-led effort at big government statism, and further support of a purely leftist agenda.  It happens so often that we cringe now when a Republican hand is raised, expecting it to smash down on us as it has done so many times before.

Many were outraged by the actions of the GOP establishment in 2011-12, but in the end, how many of us did their bidding anyway?  We keep coming back.  Even a dog learns that if you recall him, only to bash his nose with a rolled-up paper, approaching you is something to be done at his peril.  Eventually, the dog won’t come back at all, and no amount of false praise or treats will make him return when called because he has learned recall is the prelude to another beating.  Are we conservatives not more able to recognize our antagonists than are dogs? Do we not possess the requisite self-esteem to leave?

What we have done is to reinforce the behavior of our batterers. It’s gotten so bad that fleeing for a night or a week to the political battering victims’ shelter of the blogosphere or talk radio to voice our displeasure will no longer be enough.  It’s time finally to press charges and stand up for ourselves and go, never to return.  Yes, there will be hard times as a result, but the long-run dangers of staying are worse, and at some point, for people who claim to be concerned with the welfare of their children, shouldn’t we correct the environment in which they will be growing?

I say “we must go.”  Otherwise, how many black eyes will we endure?  How many betrayals?  How much infidelity must we accept?  We might claim that we had no choice but to stay, or to return, but after the tenth 9-1-1 call to Rush Limbaugh, our whining begins to lose its impact.  Do you think the GOP establishment hasn’t noticed our regular return to the fold, irrespective of what they do to us next?  We fall for their sweetened tone because we want to, and because it’s harder to strike out on our own than to come back and live in terror of our next beating at their hands. It’s time to recognize that it is our fear of the uncertainty that fuels our repeated returns, but also that in so doing, what we are guaranteeing instead is a certain result that will only grow worse. We must ask instead how much we value such predictability, if it amounts only to the certainty of our next beating. It’s time for conservatives to reject the continued abuse at the hands of their tormentors in the Republican establishment. It’s time to break the cycle.

Note: It’s not my intention to minimize domestic abuse, but instead to demonstrate how conservatives have responded to their abusers in the same way many victims of real domestic abuse react to their plights. I don’t intend to compare the horrors inflicted on such victims with the political victimization that goes on the Republican party, except as an illustration of how dependent conservatives have become on their abusers.  The immediate results of the political context I’m discussing in no way measure up to the terror under which victims of domestic violence live, but I will point out that in terms of the country and its future, the dire consequences of permitting the abuse of the GOP establishment to continue will be no less severe on a national basis.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Activism, audio, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, Mark Levin, Politics, Tokyo Rove | 5 Comments »

Mark Levin Demolishes Rove’s Claims

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

The Great One!

It was inevitable that given the shellacking Karl Rove has taken over the last few days that he would use any opportunity to advance the idea that he is a conservative. As I posted earlier on Friday evening, Rove made claims to conservative credentials on O’Reilly that were later debunked.  Mark Levin took the debunking to a new level in the second hour of his show, making it plain that Rove was being disingenuous, to say the least. Here’s the audio:

Alternative content


As Dr. Levin explains later in the same hour, he’s now attacking conservatives with blatant lies. You can listen to the entire show here.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in audio, Featured, Mark Levin, News, Politics, Tokyo Rove | Comments Closed

Rove’s Record With “the Most Conservative Candidate Who Could Win”

Friday, February 8th, 2013

Who Me?

On Friday, Karl Rove was further exposed as misleading and disingenuous.  In an email response to his appearance on Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, in which Rove claimed to have been the Director of Reagan’s 1980 Campaign in Texas, Reagan Biographer Craig Shirley responded via Daily Caller, explaining that Rove was no such thing.  In point of fact, Karl Rove ran Governor Clements’ effort for Reagan, but only after George W. Bush was defeated in the primary.  Do you understand?  Rove was a George H.W. Bush supporter, as was Texas Governor Bill Clements, for whom Rove worked at the time.  You see, Clements was a strong Bush supporter throughout the primaries, but there’s more to consider in this story.  First, watch Rove plead his case on Bill O’Reilly’s softball show:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UPO8MIvNuE]

You might wonder, watching Rove misrepresent his role in the Texas campaign for Ronald Reagan, whether it’s such a big deal that he first supported George H.W. Bush.  After all, it’s not that unusual for a candidate’s supporters to move over to the nominee’s campaign in some role after the primaries.  That said, there’s something very important I want you to consider, and it’s obvious as the spin flowing from Karl Rove’s lips:

In 1980, Rove chose Bush. Consider his dubious argument about supporting “the most conservative candidate who can win.”  It seems the most conservative candidate did win, but it wasn’t Rove’s choice in the primary in 1980.  Instead, Ronald Reagan won, and he was far more conservative than Rove’s choice. Of course, that’s not all you need to know.  In 1976, Ronald Reagan was fighting with Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination, and Karl Rove chose a horse to ride in that race too.  Ronald Reagan?  No, ladies and gentlemen,  Karl Rove was all aboard for Gerald Ford.  Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, and so it was true that once again, Rove apparently picked “the most conservative candidate who could win,” though neither did.

That’s the truth about Karl Rove.  In 1978, Karl Rove ran the losing George W. Bush campaign for congress. In 2000, his candidate nearly lost, and did lose the popular vote.  In 2004, his candidate barely squeaked by a very weak John Kerry.  In 2006, his strategies lost the House and Senate.  In 2012, he backed Romney early and often, and Mitt Romney lost. Karl Rove’s record of picking winners is abysmal. He clearly doesn’t know a conservative from a turnip, never mind a winner.  You must stop falling for his strategies, and as Mark Levin pointed out on Friday evening, Rove is attacking Steve King(R-IA) incessantly and dishonestly.  I repeat my sentiment to those who hope to reclaim leadership in the GOP: If you want any hope of winning, Karl Rove must go.

 

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Activism, Bush Clan, Featured, History, Mark Levin, Media, News, Politics, RINO Alert, Tokyo Rove, video | Comments Closed

The Republican Conspiracy to Defeat Conservatives

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

Who’s Behind the Mask?

Discussion over the last several days has focused on the implications of Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project, but if you think he and Steven Law are the only people in the Republican Party seeking the defeat of conservatism, you haven’t been paying attention.  The conspirators are everywhere, and many of them don’t even realize their part in this insidious scheme. Knowing participants like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are just the beginning. Realizing how deeply the Republican Party is infected, and considering how easily it has been corrupted and overwhelmed by a force of fifth-column Democrats in Republican clothing, you might wonder why we’d bother to save it at all.  The stunning part of this conspiracy only becomes apparent once one recognizes the true source of their devious power, seeing the real force that has been arrayed against real conservatism on behalf of the Republican conspirators, because if you’re still a Republican, the identity of their true power brokers is staring us in the face each time we gaze into the mirror:  The indispensable force upon which the various conspirators rely is ours, expressed in terms of all the times we did not walk away. It’s time to unmask and take our share of the blame.

We shouldn’t feign ignorance at the suggestion.  You know it must be the case.  Each and every time they have led us to electoral defeat, we’ve returned to them nevertheless.  We could have walked away from them, and while we complain that it’s so hard to begin without them, the truth is that too often, Rove’s critique of our actions has been correct:  He has said many time before and in many forms that we are the RINOs, because while he’s hustling campaign donations and concocting SuperPACs on behalf of the Republican Party, we’re nowhere to be seen.  We show up on election day, but we leave the running of the party to him and those like him, who are charged with the legwork of making it come together according to some kind of strategy that we leave to them to formulate.  Let me make this more clear:  Rove believes we are the real RINOs because in his view, we’re only part-time participants, and we’ll consider walking away or staying home.  He and his set are in the game all the time, without fail, and with relentless strategies, to which we are a party only when we’re expected to turn out and vote.

In all my years observing and participating in politics, I have seen instance after instance when the conservative grass-roots have become righteously enraged by some action or other of the party elite, forswearing further donations to the party apparatus, and going off on a pouting tantrum. I call it that, because the moment passions cool a few degrees, most come marching right back in to carry out the party’s bidding.  In 2011, I heard the oaths and the promises, and made a few of them myself, about how I would not support another liberal or moderate Republican for President, but in 2012, despite the huffing and puffing, on election day, desperate to oust Obama, most of us (myself included) went rushing back in to try to prop Romney up and push him over the top.  What do you suppose Karl Rove had expected us to do?  Most of us complied with his plan right down the line.  He wasn’t out to win, but merely to put on a good show to justify the massive expenditures.

Now I suppose it must be said that if it is a sign of insanity to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, so too must it be a sign of schizophrenia to behave in the first moment as if there is no going back, only to go back anyway.  The only other way to describe such behavior is to suggest that we had been bluffing, and that the GOP establishment had called our bluff repeatedly.  In the end, here we stand exposed, having made a holy spectacle of things, but in the end evincing none of the fiery resolve we had claimed at our initial offense.  Is it any wonder that the GOP establishment marches over us at every turn?  We keep letting them win, and in the end, supporting them, because we’re either too afraid or too lazy to strike out on our own.

There are those who will immediately chastise me, because as they will point out, building a new party cannot be done overnight, and cannot be done in time for the next congressional elections.  That may or may not be true, but extenuating the matter will not improve our predicament.  One of our laments in the face of leftist obstructionists to oil drilling who claim our goals will not be attained for a decades is that we never reap the benefits because we never begin.  We point out rightly that if we had begun drilling when they first opposed it, we’d have acquired that new source of oil by now.  The same thing can be said with respect to our talk about replacing the Republican Party.  If we had begun years ago, we’d be done by now, but we always permit the lengthiness of the task and the attending difficulties dissuade us from commencing.  We’re Americans, for goodness’ sake, and if we can decide to put a man on the moon inside one decade, ultimately completing it, and if we can decide to defeat the Soviet Union by out-producing and out-smarting them, and do so in a decade, surely we can likewise build a new party and toss the Roves and his ilk briskly to the curb in two or four years.

What then prohibits us?  Yes, they have an open conspiracy against us.  Yes, for all intents and purposes, they are in alliance with the Democrats.  Yes, between those two elements, they all but own exclusive control of the media.  So what?  Look around.  We outnumber them if only we’d have the good sense to realize it.  They cannot put a single establishment candidate into office without our active participation and support.  Cannot!  The fact is that it is we who put the Republic in the name “Republican,” and it’s about damned time we act as though it’s ours to control.  We must ditch them, or ditch the party, but either way, we must go no further down this path together with them, because they are leading us to a destination we cannot abide.  Where will go?  How will we get there? What must we do?

I haven’t any of the answers save one: We must separate or be stuck in this awful union in perpetuity, complicit conspirators in our own demise, losing election after election until there is no country and there is no way to make one from the ashes.  We must separate ourselves from them or bear the stamp of the appraisal we will have earned by our alignment with them.  Many people these last few days have made much of the Twitter hash-tag: #CrushRove. As bad as he is, and as malignant a force as we may take him to be within the Republican establishment, that entire concept possesses only so much power as our compliance and our votes lend to it.  Every time you think of him and his white-boards full of scrawled propaganda on Fox News, remember that it is in large measure your willingness to serve his conspiracy that gives him the power to defeat you.  It’s true that he is able to acquire large sums of cash in his efforts, but without the promise of ultimately delivering your votes by leaving you no alternative, Rove would be powerless, the money would dry up, and we would be finished with him.

We need to become better citizens, all of us, or pay an incredible price. This will demand of us not merely the swearing of oaths against a vague Republican establishment, but a commitment to seeing this through.  For years, decades in fact, we have largely turned the operation of the Republican party over to those who haven’t our interests at heart, and who do not share our principles.  If we are to do no more, we mustn’t complain when they run us to ruin.  It is with our silence and  compliance that they have purchased the power to decide who our candidates shall or shan’t be, and it is with the unchallenged ignorance of much of our flock that they have been able to persist.  Conservatives mustn’t permit either any longer.  I understand the reluctance of those few who would earnestly leave the Republican party behind, but have resolved that it’s their party, because I have felt much the same, but the fact is that given the activities of establishment Republicans for at least two decades, it hasn’t been our party for a long, long time.

We are fast approaching a time in American history when we will be judged for our diligence in speaking out truthfully on the state our union.  When the collapse comes, as it almost certainly must, I will not be associated with the Republican party.  It has been complicit in our national undoing, and conservatives who had worked so tirelessly against it shouldn’t be saddled with the blame, but their continuing association with a morally bankrupt party ensures that they too will be discredited in the ensuing debacle.  It’s time then for me to commence, on my own if I must, but in its present form and under the current chief influences, or any like them, I am done at long last with the Republican party.  If our founders could carve a rough-hewn nation out of the wilderness that had been the American continent, I should consider myself lucky to be an heir to their exertions, but I will not let their republic wither and die for my own lack of diligence.  The only remaining alternative before us is to join the conspiracy against her by silent assent, surrendering to the bogeyman who will have been revealed: It was us all along.

 

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics | 2 Comments »

Karl Rove Still Trying to Decide for Conservatives

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

Shrugging-Off Levin

Karl Rove appeared on Hannity on Tuesday night to deflect criticism that he’s an agent of the establishment at war with the Tea Party.  I don’t buy it, and I believe his own professions in this clip should give you a sense of how he views the rank-and-file conservatives in the country.  You see, he explains that it’s the goal of his “Conservative Victory Project” to support “the most conservative candidate who can win.” You may well notice that there exists a mile of wiggle-room in that statement, and it’s made from a deeply held sense of arrogance that is simply undeniable.  If you watch carefully, at roughly 3:43 into the clip from Hannity’s show, as Sean asks him a question about the reaction to the Time article, you will see what “Tokyo Rove” thinks of Mark Levin, shrugging him off in derisive dismissal(screen-capture at left.)  Watch the segment:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9aYtgFn1A]

Rove attacked the motives of a wide range of people in the Tea Party movement, both in the blogosphere and in activist endeavors, as seeking some financial end.  The irony of such a claim is galling.  Mr. Rove insists that his new group exists to support “the most conservative candidate who can win.”  This prompts a few questions in my mind, and I’d like to see them answered by Mr. Rove or any of his numerous establishment apologists:

  1. Who decides what constitutes the “most conservative?”  According to whose standard?  Karl Rove’s?
  2. Who decides who is able to win?  According to whose calculations? Karl Rove’s?
  3. What do we know about Mr. Rove’s success rate in his selections of candidates?

You see, when I answer these questions, I come to several conclusions, and none of them support Mr. Rove’s fanciful explanation on Hannity’s show.  Karl Rove has shown no understanding of conservatism.  His relentless appeal for immigration reform, his attacks on other conservative causes, candidates or efforts, and his involvement in the Bush administration with the passage of very liberal programs suggest to me quite strongly that Karl Rove is not an appropriate or even qualified judge of conservatism in any respect.

Since when is Mr. Rove the final arbiter on who is able to win?  He told us throughout the primary season that only Romney could win, and through the general campaign that Romney would win, and that it might be a big win(though he did not quite go down the fantastic rabbit-hole with Dick Morris who predicted a Romney landslide.)  Still, if 2012 is the measure of Mr. Rove’s ability to pick winners and losers, I’d say he did pretty poorly, and on his performance in 2012 measured against his own predictions and his own direction of funds, I would suggest that a blind-folded ape flipping  coins could have done as well, and probably much better.  For somebody who now indicates he supported Steelman in Missouri, it’s funny that he twice refers to her as “Deb,” though her name is Sarah.  I can’t say it adds much to his credibility.

Hannity’s apologetic interview with Karl Rove does nothing to convince me that Rove intends anything but that which has already been said.  His history of efforts against the grass-roots of the Republican Party are evidence enough for me that what he’s after is not conservatism, and certainly not victory.  Translated, “the most conservative candidate who can win” means: “Vote for the people we recommend, or we’re going to destroy your candidate, depriving your candidate of just enough votes to make them lose.” It’s clear to me that Rove and his bunch would just as soon lose as have an actual conservative win office, and I’m not inclined to believe a word Mr. Whiteboard has to say in his own defense.  Sure, the article at the beginning of this latest flap appeared in the New York Times, and I’m certain there’s a bias there, but it hardly excuses Rove’s past actions, and doesn’t explain away his current ones either.  One of these days, conservatives will begin to catch on that an “R” following somebody’s name doesn’t necessarily imply the first damned thing about their philosophical leanings.

 

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, Mark Levin, News, Politics, Tea Party, video | Comments Closed

Truth in Advertising? Rove Creates “Conservative Victory Project”

Sunday, February 3rd, 2013

The New York Times is reporting that long-time establishment insider and Bush confidante Karl Rove has created a new political action committee called “Conservative Victory Project,” an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak if ever there had been one.  Since there’s only the slightest hint of conservatism in Rove’s past, and since we know he has no intention of permitting real conservatives to win anything, sabotaging and undermining them at every opportunity, it’s laughable that he and Steven J. Law, (President of Crossroads GPS, President and CEO of American Crossroads, as well as former Deputy Labor Secretary under George W. Bush, among postings of lesser note) have combined forces in order to play a bigger role in selecting Senate candidates.  Breitbart is also reporting this as an effort to fully undermine the Tea Party’s influence, and as I and other conservative have long suspected, implied in all of this is the role Rove played in helping defeat various Republican Senate candidates in 2012.   Rove is part of the reason the GOP is a feckless, useless gaggle of insiders who do not serve their constituents, but more than this, he and his ilk are part of the reason conservatives continue to lose. It’s not accidental.

Let’s be blunt about Rove’s activities, and admit that he is no friend to conservatives. According to the Times article’s opening lines, the “Conservative Victory Project” is being created with a single purpose, and it isn’t conservative victory:

“The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.”

With the Times inserting the descriptor “far-right,” what we’re really talking about is mainstream conservatives, who are regarded by the New York Times as extremists.  Less obvious is that Rove and his band of merry moderates see conservatives in precisely the same way, substituting their own version of statism for the concept of conservatism.  It became plain to me that this would be Rove’s direction once he appeared on Fox News this week to explain conservatism in terms solely of fiscal and economic considerations.  He’s trying to re-cast “social moderates and fiscal conservatives(a contradiction in both ideology and terms) as “conservatism” (Full stop.)  By claiming the mantle of conservatism as their own, the hope is to scavenge and cannibalize the unaware and uninformed who tend to follow the Republican crowd, but who are not exactly devoted students of political philosophy or ideology, and so may not realize that there can be no such thing, in fact or in logic, as a “fiscal conservative and social liberal/moderate.”

As Ben Shapiro, writing for Breitbart explains, much of this is Rove’s fight for relevance and credibility in the wake of the 2012 disaster:

“But victory for conservatives isn’t Rove’s goal. He’s a political insider par excellence, and he’s playing for his political life in the aftermath of 2012. If that means declaring war on the Tea Party, so be it. “

Rove once thought to use the Tea Party, but when they didn’t particularly respond to his strategy, he decided they were more trouble than they were worth.  His decision to submarine Christine O’Donnell was a calculation in favor of demolishing the Tea Party, and from that point forward, Rove has done nothing but undermine actual conservatives at every turn, while propping up long-time DC insiders and establishment hacks. Rove represents the well-heeled, nanny-statist wing of the Republican party, a group of people who generally feel more at home among liberals than with anybody who meets the definition of “conservative.” Through various Super PAC activities in 2012, Rove and his friends spent more than a quarter-billion dollars in pursuit of their agenda.  They lost big, but only insofar as their candidates lost.  What they succeeded in doing was to assist a number of Republicans in losing, but more importantly, in putting up another place-holder into the Presidential nomination who they fully expected would not win, despite their fairy tales to the contrary.

Conservatives won’t be surprised at any of this, but what they must not do is to permit Rove and his pals to claim the label of mainstream conservatism, because they represent no such thing.  If Rove had any integrity, he would relabel his latest effort “the Moderate Victory over Conservatives Project,” or “The Mini-Dem Victory Project,” because the only win they’re likely to obtain is one against conservatives, particularly if they fall for his siren’s song again. Rove is poison to actual conservatism, and despite all the money and prestige, we should at last come to view him as a destructive force of the liberal faction of the Republican Party.  He doesn’t speak for conservatism, he doesn’t like conservatives, and he would rather that Democrats win than to let actual conservatives achieve victory.  After all, if he can see the defeat of a few conservatives in traditionally red states, he may be able to defeat the Democrat with any old RINO in the next cycle.  Consider Indiana the model, as you can bet that come 2018, he’ll have Mitch Daniels or some other popular Hoosier-State moderate ready to challenge the first term Democrat incumbent who his pals in Indiana helped to defeat Richard Mourdock.

As Breitbart’s article points out, they’re after Steve King(R-IA) who they will try to paint with notions of extremism.  It’s the Rove way: Attack and defeat conservatives so their former seats can be later back-filled with GOP establishment types.  The “fiscal conservative and social moderate” schtick of the GOP establishment is a demonstrable loser, and only Rove and a few like-minded DC insiders seem unconvinced by that fact.  We mustn’t permit them to lead conservatives astray once more.  It’s time to send Rove packing.  He’s the persistent architect of conservative defeat.

 

 

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Activism, Conservatism, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, Tea Party | 3 Comments »

NOW Politico Notices Rove’s Apparent Leanings?

Saturday, March 31st, 2012

Rove? Biased? Get Out!

Permit me a moment’s chuckle as I consider the brilliant “journalism” of Politico.com.  Here is an on-line “political news site” that brought to light claims by various parties against Herman Cain, along with other Pulitzer-Quality journalism that indicates just how spiffy they really are over at Politico.  Now they’ve posted a story by Kenneth Vogel and Keach Hagey speculating on the possibility that Karl Rove is assisting Mitt Romney.  Now that’s journalism!  Heck, that may qualify as outright rocket science.  I find the article laughable, but for the fact that they seem to be quite serious in their approach, a fact that makes the article all the more excruciatingly gut-busting.  Let’s be honest, shall we?  That they’ve only now arrived at the conclusion that Karl Rove might be pushing for one particular candidate is embarrassing.  Where have these guys been?

As their opening argument, they offered this:

“But it’s hard to miss, among all of Rove’s Fox commentary and Wall Street Journal columns, that he seems to favor one candidate over the others.”

No way!  Shocking!  Karl Rove favors one candidate over the others?  Is it possible?

“Over the last year, Rove has used these powerful media platforms to systematically undercut every rising Romney challenger in succession while lauding Romney’s victories as “historic.” The pattern has gotten under the skin of the supporters of Romney’s challengers, who argue that Rove has more ties to Romney and his super PAC than he is disclosing to his media audiences, and thus has no business assessing the Republican primary race as a purportedly independent analyst.”

I’d like to know what this pair of investigative gurus have been doing these last eight months.  In fairness, I will say they have done an excellent job of laying out some pertinent facts about Rove’s connections to Romney via his SuperPac, American Crossroads GPS.  What I couldn’t quite understand was why they suddenly felt the need to tell us what has been painfully obvious for some time, but they managed to tell us why they’re really concerned about Karl Rove’s machinations at this late date anyway:

“Santorum and Gingrich are both former Fox News contributors, and have been beating Romney handily, in terms of airtime, on the so-called “Fox News primary” throughout the campaign. But they are not winning the all-important Karl Rove Primary – significant both for his media prominence and his association with the super PAC American Crossroads and a sister group that together plan to spend as much as $300 million attacking President Barack Obama and other Democrats in the general election.”

That makes more sense.  It’s not that the writers are so concerned for the unfairness they document in Rove’s treatment of other candidates so much as the fact that Rove will certainly be turning his powerful machine against Barack Obama. Nevertheless, they did manage to put up a list of Rove’s dirty deeds, and it seems to match with what I have seen:

 

  • When Romney was being ridiculed for offering to bet Rick Perry $10,000 in last December’s debate, Rove told Hannity he “didn’t think it was a big mistake,” and then pivoted to attacking Gingrich for his talk of a lunar base.
  • Later that month, when Gingrich complained about being carpet-bombed by negative ads paid for by Romney’s super PAC in Iowa, Rove called him a “whiner.”
  • When Gingrich was leading the polls in January, Rove dinged Gingrich for calling Romney “a liberal” and suggesting that poor children should work as janitors in schools.
  • In mid-February, as Santorum was coming off a batch of wins, Rove said Santorum’s views on contraception, particularly within the bounds of marriage, “appears to be judgmental,” before going on to call Gingrich a “whiner” once again.
  • As things were looking close between Romney and Santorum in Michigan, Rove accused the press of “rooting for Santorum to win even though they are hammering him with a lot of social things” because “the media is rooting for Obama to win.”
  • On the night of the Michigan and Arizona primaries, he echoed the Romney campaign’s complaints about Santorum’s robocalls to Democrats and called out Santorum for labeling Obama a “snob” for wanting everyone to have a college education. That, Rove said, “hurt more than what you might think” because “most of us believe that higher education is a means for prosperity.”
  • In his Wall Street Journal column following those primaries, he declared the primary “solidly in Mitt Romney’s direction” and proceeded to reiterate Santorum’s “unforced errors,” from the college comment to his dismissal of John F. Kennedy’s speech about the separation between church and state.
  • Even when Rove is critical of Romney, as he was in a Feb. 1 Journal column declaring the “Romney campaign is tilted too heavily toward biography and not nearly enough toward ideas,” he acts like a supportive adviser doling out constructive criticism, tossing in lines boosting Romney and chiding Gingrich for their respective handling of Paul Ryan’s budget.

That’s a pretty decent laundry list of recent Rove doings, but as they point out, there are more complete lists including Tommy Christopher’s at Mediaite, penned back in December, noting that Rove was doing a number on Gingrich at the time, but he listed many others.

Of course, it’s difficult to say with any precision what may be lingering between Karl Rove’s ears.  I’ve never had any particular problem expressing my own concerns about his whiteboard antics on FoxNews, including some of the garbage he was heaving in the direction of Sarah Palin late last summer.  As The Politico piece concludes, Rove is part of the GOP establishment now, and his antics merely prove the point that if he’s involved, it’s because he has a dog in this hunt, as I asserted all those months ago.  As I said then, Karl Rove is a master manipulator and this is how he operates.  None of this is surprising to me, and I’m stunned that it’s taken Politico this long to notice.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Featured, GOP Candidates, Media, Mitt Romney, News, Politics | 6 Comments »