Rove the Rogue

Joe Conason, as he so often does, calls it right: Karl Rove is a liar Salon 06/24/05.

Karl Rove is a liar and a scoundrel. He is not a patriot but a pure partisan, as his own record proved long before now.

The other night Rove lied about the liberal reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and again exploited patriotism for narrow partisan advantage in a time of war. He seeks to divert public opinion from the failures of the Bush administration by suppressing dissent, stigmatizing "liberals" and returning to the same old tactics that the Republican far right has used ever since the McCarthy era.

When the White House's leading political strategist is stigmatizing the entire Democratic Party as unpatriotic, I don't see how anyone who cares about the future of American democracy can respond in anything but blunt terms. Guys like Karl Rove are not nice people. They are not decent, they are not honorable, they have no sense of "fair play." That doesn't mean that anything goes in opposing them. It does mean that everyone should be realistic about what they are.

Conason recalls:

In the aftermath of 9/11, liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill stood proudly with conservative Republicans to pledge their support for military action against al-Qaida and the Taliban. The wobbly weakness of George W. Bush's initial response to the terror strikes went unmentioned, as did anything else that might hint at dissension at a moment of crisis. When Bush delivered his powerful speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, he won standing applause across the bitter divide left by the 2000 election. For the first time, Democratic congressional leaders declined free airtime to answer a Republican presidential address.

"We want America to speak with one voice tonight and we want enemies and the whole world and all of our citizens to know that America speaks tonight with one voice," said Rep. Richard Gephardt, then the House Democratic leader. "We have faith in Bush and his colleagues in the executive branch to do this in the right way."

And look what they got for that genuine epression of patriotism.

Conason  gets this right, too:

So when vicious little Ken Mehlman, the RNC chairman, claims that Rove was referring only to Michael Moore, he's lying too. I expect no apologies from either of them or their bullying supporters. They should expect none when those they have insulted and betrayed tell them what they are.

Hesiod challenges the mainstream media to treat Bush's upcoming Tuesday war speech with the critical scrutiny it deserves: Don't Fall For It American Street blog 06/24/05

If any of you in the meda are dumb enough to believe that Bush is going to actually inveil a NEW Iraq exit strategy, you ought to have your heads examined. It will be the same old stuff we’ve heard from Bush for over a year.

Training Iraqi security forces, drafting a new constitution, and having new elections. Period. Most of which has been part of his "exit strategy" since at least this year's State of the Union addresss! ...

Maybe he’ll put a few more "details" in the speech, like trumped up numbers of Iraqi security forces we’ve "trained." But it will be a speech totally devoid of any newsworthy content.

I suggest asking for a a copy of the speech draft as a PRE-REQUISITE for covering the speech. make sure you get it at least an hour before the speech, so you can read it.

Hesiod also calls attention to the fact that Bush repeatedly uses appearances with what are essentially captive audiences of US troops to stage what are essentially campaign speeches.