Where’s Rover?

by digby

One of he things I always wondered about the Rove-as-genius myth was why Bush’s adminstration was so lame if Rove was so great. It’s true that Junior was very popular for a while after 9/11, but any president would have been. He was good at pretending he had won a mandate, but he never actually did it. He’s a ruthless, slimy Republican operative, but no better than many other ruthless, slimy Republican operatives.

So what’s the “architect” of this failed Republican realignment doing now that he’s been shown to be a loser at the one thing he’s always supposedly been good at?

Since the November election, Rove has been promoting the contrarian idea that the Republicans lost their majorities in the House and Senate not because of Bush’s unpopularity or because voters turned against the Iraq war but because congressional Republicans didn’t sufficiently live up to their core ideals, such as a commitment to spending restraint, a muscular foreign policy, and strict ethics. In other words, associates say, Rove is arguing that the GOP lost control because congressional Republicans weren’t conservative enough.

White House insiders say Bush is counting on Rove, who is the president’s main political adviser and deputy chief of staff, to define “common ground” in dealing with the Democrats who now control Congress. In Rove’s view, that means the White House shouldn’t stray too far from the conservative base and should continue making policy from the political right–and not give too much ground to the Democrats. Rove argues privately that the Dems should also reach out to the White House and that Bush shouldn’t do most of the compromising. One of Rove’s theories is that the Democrats can be maneuvered into a series of difficult choices next year as they try to enact their legislative agenda and pass the federal budget.

The central choice, according to Rove, will be to cut spending or raise taxes. If congressional Democrats cut spending, their liberal base will be alienated. If they raise taxes, rank-and-file voters will be unhappy. GOP insiders suspect that Rove also had a big hand in distancing Bush from the Iraq Study Group because he believed the bipartisan panel was too critical of current Iraq policy. Rove, insiders say, believes that victory is still achievable and that Bush should pursue it as vigorously as he can. The president made those points at his news conference today.

It’s typical of Rove to project Bush’s weakness on to others and then attack it. Here he’s blaming the congress for not being “conservative” enough, which is the standard rap on Junior. I doubt that the Republicans are buying it. The Bush family will not ever be given another chance after two failed presidencies.(“I have no future,” says Jeb Bush) Rove is a member of the Bush clan and he won’t be forgiven. All that self-serving mythology he created about his power and his genius is coming back to bite him.

I won’t even address his plans to corner the Democrats. If they are stupid enough to let this happen then they deserve what they get. Bush is the most wounded president since Richard Nixon; there’s nothing to fear from him. (And Rove’s talent has never been this kind of politics. He’s an election strategist and a smear artist, period.)

I have no idea if he believes that the US can still achieve victory in Iraq and is pushing Bush to escalate. It could very easily be some sniping among insiders. But it’s also possible that he’s pushing it because he’s still convinced that the problem is that Americans are just unhappy because they don’t think we are “winning.” It’s all about how people “feel” with him, never about what they see or think or know. The administration has never understood that when the people found out there were no WMD after the endless repetition of “with a coalition of the willing we will disarm Saddam Hussein” — “winning” lost all meaning.

It would be like Rove to marshal all the wingnuts and persuade Junior that a show of strength will impress all the screaming GOP fangirls if he just acts like a winner. Governance by PR campaign is his specialty. Whatever the case, Rove is now in the process of saving his own reputation and legacy along with Bush’s and his advice is political in ways that are far different than the electoral experience he’s known for. Escalating the war is the smart move for him. He’s got to shoot the moon or he’s finished.

The man should have been fired as Bush promised he would do if it turned out any of his staff had leaked the Plame information. But he’s still there, being paid by you and me to keep this country on its nightmare trajectory to perdition.

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