Farewell, Turd Blossom
August 13th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
So Karl Rove is returning to Texas. Do we have to take him back?
The campaign guru and presidential political adviser — with the flowering poo nickname — announced this morning that he will leave the White House at the end of August. You can watch Bush and Rove’s press statement — filled with the expected bromides — at the CNN site.
We’ll forego the Rove legacy talk that many national political reporters are already spewing forth. (Our short, short version: he has a unique political mind; we suspect he’s a lousy dinner party guest.) We have no idea if Rove’s skinned-shin style of politics will endure. Or if he actually will remain out of the game for good.
Rove told the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor this morning that he had considered resigning for about a year, and he wants to spend more time with his family. For a political reporter, anytime an official steps down to “spend time with my family,” it’s code for something else. After all, if you actually wanted to spend time with your family, you wouldn’t have gotten into national politics. It’s also worth noting that right after he leaves the White House, Rove reportedly plans to go dove hunting in West Texas, sans family.
What’s the real reason? There’s talk “behind the scenes” in DC that Rove’s planned book and trip ’round the lecture circuit will pay off lingering legal bills, though Rove and the White House deny this. Either way, we suspect the man has a first-degree case of burnout after nearly 15 years of convincing voters to support George W. Bush. He’s human after all — despite reports to the contrary.
And of course, the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys is still out there, and Rove is very much at the center of it. Democrats in Congress have subpoenaed Rove to testify, and the White House has refused.
Once Rove leaves the White House, the president can still use executive privilege to shield Rove from testifying. It seems doubtful that Democrats will find it any easier to drag Rove the private citizen before a committee.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Rove has no morals, but he is not as evil, cold-blooded, and vicious as Cheney. Cheney has no compunctions about such things as moral justification, ethics, or rule of law even when involving matters of life and death. I’m not sure that Rove is quite as bad as that. It is indicative of Cheney’s heritage that dogfighting is only a misdemeanor in Wyoming, but for the rest of the United States it is a felony.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:59 am
rove’s a mediocrity — it was the supreme court that gave bush his first win — his second was due to 9/11
– look rather at how rove helped democrats take control of congress as he kept asking americans to believe in his made-up world despite continued failure in afghanistan together with growing disaster in iraq, which is all, according to rove, due to the evil that is iran