Karl Rove is leaving the Bush Administration. The Architect. Bush's Brain. Turd blossom. Yeah, he's been called all those things. (The latter by his own boss!) He is the crafty guy who made GW Bush a big deal, who took Bill Clinton's extreme asinine behavior over a 21-year old "aide" from Beverly Hills and used it as a brickbat to force the charisma-challenged Al Gore to run away from Bill Clinton, who had "wrecked" the country with a peace and prosperity record, and thus cost Gore his seemingly easy election in 2000.
Say what you want about Karl, he was a real campaigner. Kennedy needed a "missile gap" to beat Nixon in 1960; all Rove needed for his guy was a dull candidate who fell for his own "be your own man" strategy.
Rowe can now go off to the big-money corporate speech circuit and has already announced the inevitable book deal where he teams up with some vanilla-prosed scribe to write a self-congratulatory memoir about Life in the Oval Office. I hope he gives it a good title like: "The Center of the Storm"' or "The Apex of Power" or "Where the Bodies Are Buried and Just How Deep".
Mr. Rove was to GW Bush what Louis Howe was to FDR in the 1920's, what Mike Deaver was to Ronald Reagan in the 70's and 80's, what James Carville was to Bill Clinton, what Richard Nixon was to Richard Nixon, you get the idea. (Rove himself reportedly drew his style from emulating the legendary 19th Century political boss, Mark Hanna, an Ohioan who brought William Mc Kinley to his electoral victories in 1896 and 1900.)
The year 2006 was the end of Rove's productive shelf life and now I suspect he wants to get out now because the GOP Bonanza may be suspended next year due to the weak performance by the Iraqi government, the soft domestic housing market and a general sense of national neo-Con fatigue. Many in the middle class have seen enough; the Democrats can run as the "bring us back to normalcy party" for the first time maybe ever. But don't tune out on politics just yet. As long as their are primaries and debates and 10-second soundbites, its still early and everything is up for grabs.
Mitt Romney actually said he was "pleased as punch" to be the victor in that all-crucial Iowa straw poll this weekend. Man, I knew Mormons don't swear, but, yikes, he pulled out a phrase not used in American politics since Hubert Humphrey walked the earth. Gadzooks, Mitt, update the vocabulary! Meanwhile, Giuliani still leads the pack nationally, as does Senator Clinton according to Rassmussen Reports' summary of the polls.
This year features the closest thing to a national primary ever, coming up in early February. Texas, Florida, California, and New York will all pick on or about the same day (Feb. 5th) . This "Super Duper Primary" will mean nominations could be wrapped up quickly, with long months of laying low by the front-runners until the coronations, err conventions. I don't think this front-loaded set-up is a good idea myself. The primaries should be spread out longer to afford voters time to see how candidates deal with problems that come up over many months' of campaigning.
Many voters may I predict will have the long Spring Summer and Fall of 2008 wishing they had voted from someone else. The bickering GOP and Democratic parties loud mouths' will try to bait the other side to come out and say or do something to make news and spin it to their advantage. A little of that goes a long way, and strays from real issues. This primary-bunching may be better than the old fashioned "smoke filled room at the convention", but not by much.
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