More Rove retrospectives

The September Atlantic Monthly article, "The Rove Presidency" by Joshua Green about Rove isn't online yet except for subscribers (and also not at the newsstand I visited this morning). But the Mahablog has excerpts.

Exit, Karl Rove, Stage Right by Matthew Rothschild The Progressive Online:

By relying on the rightwing base, and by feeding its reactionary appetites, Rove made the Republican Party barely recognizable to old, main line, main street, or libertarian party members. That is why, even today, the candidates for the Republican nomination take turns genuflecting before such idols as creationism and spewing bile at immigrants, gays and lesbians, and women who need abortions.

Rove also was there, in the White House, when Bush and Cheney wheeled out their propaganda apparatus, almost five years ago to the day, to bamboozle the Congress and the American people into the Iraq War.

So spare me the buddy-buddy farewell of boy George and pudgy Karl.

Karl Rove: The Machiavelli Who Failed by John Nichols The Nation blog 08/13/07:

In the end, Rove has done his party no more favors than he has done his nation. And that is the part of his legacy that will be most damaging to the man who may have been able to manipulate a few elections but who will not succeed in manipulating history. ...

Karl Rove leaves another Bush campaign - and, make no mistake, the last eight years have been about campaigning, not governing - as he has left them before: under the twin clouds of scandal and failure.

What Really Brought Rove Down? by Adele Stan American Prospect Online 08/14/07 speculates on the backstory of Rove's departure.

As does Marcy Wheeler in What is Karl Rove hiding? The Guardian 08/14/07 and (as Emptywheel) in My Guesses on Why Rove Resigned The Next Hurrah blog 08/13/07.

And Michael Winship in The Jaundiced Rove of Texas Truthout.org 08/14/07. He also reminds us not to get into too much of a "ding-dong, the witch is dead" mood over his departure:

We see the Rove (and Cheney) legacy of using terrorism and fear as a wedge continued in the way Democrats folded like a cheap suitcase a week and a half ago, when the White House rammed through legislation authorizing warrantless searches and surveillance of phone calls and emails. As Senator Russ Feingold noted, "They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave."

We see it, too, perhaps most frighteningly, in the growing neo-con clamor for military action against Iran.

Andre Banks at the RaceWire blog takes a bemused look at an unlikely speculation on his decision to leave: Karl Rove Resigns... In the Name of Racial Justice? 08/13/07. He writes:

Rove has been the "strategist" (head thug) for some of the most notoriously racist U.S. policymaking in recent history: immigration reform, the war in Iraq, and don't even get me started on the response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. It seems he's been pretty keen on appeasing the "nativist instincts" of the far-right of his party for some time now.

There has always been a struggle within the Republican party about how to manage the less savvy racists within the party. I would argue that since 2000 (maybe I need to go all the way back to Nixon) that strategy has morphed into something like, "put them in the White House and surround them with them with great press people and just enough colored folks (who won't rock the boat)."

Tags: karl rove