How Rove Harnessed Government for GOP Gains

Source: Washington Post

Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected, chief strategist Karl Rove summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The subject of the Oct. 1, 2003, meeting was "asset deployment," and the message was clear:

The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush's reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort.

"The White House determines which members need visits," said an internal e-mail about the previously undisclosed Rove "deployment" team, "and where we need to be strategically placing our assets."

Many administrations have sought to maximize their control of the machinery of government for political gain, dispatching Cabinet secretaries bearing government largesse to battleground states in the final days of elections. The Clinton White House routinely rewarded big donors with stays in the Lincoln Bedroom and private coffees with senior federal officials, and held some political briefings for top Cabinet officials during the 1996 election.

But Rove, who announced last week that he is resigning from the White House at the end of August, pursued the goal far more systematically than his predecessors, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Post, enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent campaign that was an integral part of his strategy to establish Republican electoral dominance.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/18/AR2007081801182.html?hpid=topnews

Rove needs to be stopped from dragging America down any further. We have freedom of speech, but what he has done is nothing short of anti-democratic. He has taken the election process and turned it into a game for gain. Nothing less.

had Jeb not been governor of Florida the deadly reign of Bush the Lesser would never had happened.

Had people been more sophisticated about push-polling, Bush would never have been elected Gov. of Texas or won the primary in S.C., which ousted the front-runner John McCain:

Rovian push polls: Would you vote for Ann Richards if you knew that she surrounded herself with lesbians on her staff?

Would you vote for John McCain if you knew that he had a black child? (McCain's wife adopted a Bangladeshi girl.)

Karl Rove's bad karma will get him in the end.

just like all the GOP evildoers.

You said:

In the end Rove's demise will be an opulent and very comfortable old age, just like all the GOP evildoers.

I would expand that comment extra-nationally and say ANYONE friendly with the Bush Crime Family and doing what they do get that demise. Even Pinochet got that, in spite of the fact that justice dogged him all his life more so than the rest of the Bush Legion of Evil Leaders. Marcos. Baby Doc. All the Bushie Buddies.

Only traitors to the Bush like Noriega and Useful Patsies like Saddam get anything else.

But yes, it does seem the one constant in life is that, by at least a 2-1 margin (and perhaps much higher) that crime, when performed by Elites or Imperial...DOES PAY, alot. In power and stolen loot, as well as other ways.

Think about it, how often have Bush-like figures been punished for their crimes since the dawn of time. I mean, we can look to the Nazis at Nuremberg or Milosevic at the Hague, as hopeful examples, but really, they are but two examples in a literally ocean of tyrants, thieves and murderers in National Leadership Positions.

From the more primitively violent Mugabe in Zimbabwe to the eminently civilized New Totalitarianism of BushCheney, it has always mostly been bad people doing terrible things to their own and each other's peoples because the Sociopaths who also happen to be Social Dominators, rise to positions of extraordinary power, almost always.

I hate to be so despairing, but that is how History's Record reads. Don't shoot the messenger.

If we can get ahold of our country again, Rove may end up more like Goering or Milosevic or other such mass murderers. It seems like the rule of law and justice are gone for good in this country, but as long as there are a few left who are unwilling to give up, there is still hope.

as if we NEEDED any proof

:hi: skittles!

lord I am SICK of these GOP freaks :o

Isn't doling out rewards to loyal Congresscritters illegal (yeah, I know. What else is new, right?).

This goes well beyond a little pork, but a co-ordinated political activity against the opposition that is closer to Soviet in it's pervasiveness and throughness (oh, and unAmerican-ness) than it is to anything I have ever heard of or seen being done in this nation since I'd been alive.

Given the way the BenDover Congress has been acting, I'm surprised there hasn't been an act passed making any loyal Republican exempt from any law.

And I'm only half joking.

I shudder to think where we would be if there were actually some real geniuses and competent people in this bunch. In some ways we're lucky it was this bunch of fuck ups or we'd really be up shits creek. As it is the damage may be irreversible, but since they were so incompetent I do think we may be able to begin reversing the damage once we these incompetent scumbags out of office.

We need PUBLIC FINANCING of all elections AND stricter laws on the use of government resources for partisan political purposes...