Comments on "Karl Rove Is Not Smarter Than the Rest of Us. Hes Just More Evil."
Right. On. The. Money.
Word.
The funny thing is, Rove is tactically smart but strategically dumb, and has orchestrated four Bush victories at the cost of permanently destroying the Republican Party.
Plenty of Republicans now feel the same way. Ex-Bushie and National Review hack David Frum today in the NYT:
Unfortunately most people have very short memories and I suspect the Republican party will come out just fine. The Democrats, however, may not survive. If they don't win here I think we need to find a new party.
Yes, only stupid, mean, crass, evil, small-minded people fell for these tactics, but remember, Rove was trying to build a permanent Republican majority.
Unfortunately, this describes the majority of the voting public.
The irony here is that if the Democrats did something like this to the Conservatives, the rumor would probably wind up being *true*. ;)
I donīt know Dianna if that is true. Have a little hope : ) I think people are sick to death of it all and want change.
It seems like we have been in a reign of terror and I think they (republicans and religious right )have ruined themselves and itīs done.
Things are changing, at least I hope they are and that is kind of funny coming from a person like me.
: ) Have some hope.
@6 I'm with you to some degree. I don't think the American people are venal as a whole, just lazy and apathetic. People in this country don't view voting as a deliberative process of choosing between candidates for the best person, but as a tool to be used in case of emergency, and then to punish, like an old shotgun they keep in the closet and only pull out when the murderer is banging on the door.
Speaking of framing, if you've never read the afterword of George Lakoff's "Moral Politics," it's worth the time. In that chapter, Lakoff talks about the various metaphors that can be used to conceptualize what an election is.
Among the metaphors Lakoff lists are the following: (1) a War; (2) a Football Game; (3) a horse race; and (4) a legal process for democratically establishing "the will of the people"; and (5) a political process that is just another aspect of a tough, competitive world.
When people on the left praise Roe's Machiavellian genius, they are tacitly questioning their own view of electoral politics and the operational metaphors that inform it.
Typically, people on the left do not see an election as either number 1 or number 5. They tend to see it as either 2, 3, or 4. Within the parameters of these metaphors, it's not enough to just win. The quality of the win is important too. A dirty win is tainted. In fact, it's not really a win at all.
For those who see an election as either 1 or 5, a win is a win by any means necessary. Those who manage to win, deserve to win. A war is not about ethics and morality. It is about survival. So fine points of ethics and morality may be overlooked.
This is what "the Prince" is about: Getting power and holding it. In many respects, it see politics as 5 above. When it comes to getting power and helping to hold it, Rove has been very effective.
So when people on the left praise him, they are at least implicitly asking (a) whether they should also be playing the game that way, and (b) whether it is better to lose with dignity and principle and not hold power, or win whatever the cost.
Clearly Amanda believes it is better to lose with dignity. Or perhaps more accurately, she believes that a true genius should be able to win without stooping to Rove's level (i.e., it isn't Rove's genius it's the left's incompetence that has led to Democratic defeat).
While this may be true up to a point, it is also hard to formulate an effective strategy for defeating an opponent if the two of you aren't both playing the same game (clash of metaphors).
The genius of Rove (or somebody over on that side) has been the way they have successfully taken things down into this place that the Democrats aren't typically inclined to consider, let alone go to. Is this low down and evil? Yes. But there's a certain genius in finding relatively simple approaches that are very effective. Lowest common denominator? Yup. Does it work? Yup. Do we win? Yup. Then who really cares what other people think.
Of course, this is why the Republicans hated Clinton. He was not afraid to play this game. And he and his aides were better at it than most Repubs were.
It's also why Clinton made a lot of Democrats uneasy (myself included), especially at the outset. But I have to say, after finally being on the winning team for the first time in my life during the 1990s, it felt pretty good. And I still feel remorse about the opportunities we lost when Bush, Rove and Co. managed to steal the 2000 election.
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