Karl Rove Instructed * to Ignore NOLA to Court Far Right Base

It makes good sense, if you think about it. The New GOP/Neo-Con alliance has modelled itself on the old Southern Democratic Party, using the strategies that allowed wealthy whites in the South to dupe working class whites into voting against their own economic interests.
The way this works, a strong, charming, articulate "leader" claims a spiritual or even physical kinship with Southern working class people based upon similarities in race, religion and regionality. He paints members of other races, religions and regions as being dangerous, bent upon taking the goods of his "kinsmen", perhaps even bent upon violence. He promises to use his power and strength to protect his weaker kinsmen. All they have to do is surrender their will to his, vote the way he tells them, buy the goods he sells them, say what he tells them to say. Note: since many Southerners have moved to other regions of the country, "Southerners" can now be found in Oakland, Utah etc.
Leadership is extremely important in the South. In times of crisis, it becomes even more important, and a leadership vaccum is almost intolerable and generally will be filled by someone, whoever is the brightest, strongest, most capable. A behind the scenes leader is no good. The leader must be visible, have a strong voice. He must roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty. He must show empathy and tears. But, at the same time, he must be a tower of strength and accept responsibility. Ideally, he is Robert E. Lee or MLK Jr. Bill Clinton or Colin Powell will do.
Under the proper scheme of things, when the flood waters began to seep into NOLA on Monday, the federal Leader for that city's crisis should have been chosen and announced, and he (or she) should have been on the ground by early Tuesday morning. This is what I expected. It is probably what every other Southerner expected. We dont particularly want the feds to step in and take care of everything for us, but we have all gotten used to big natural disasters being the pervue of federal emergency management. So, you can imagine my surprise and the surprise of millions of other southerners when Tuesday passed and then Wednesday passed and there was no Leader on the ground in NOLA. Instead, Codie Rice, the most likely candidate, was in NYC buying shoes. W. was in the west getting a guitar. Cheney was in his bunker. Hell, they didnt even ask Guiliani to fly down.
For a few days, I have wondered if Karl Rove was just being a moron. Maybe he didnt hear the pleas of all the southerners asking"Who is in charge?" or "Can we get someone down here who can authorize federal relief?" Does he not know anything about the South, despite the fact that he has onbviously carefully courted its vote.
But no, I can not attribute that degree of stupidity to Karl Rove, though I am sure at this point that he would love to plead ignorance, the way that W. gets to plead ignorance to so many things. I believe that Rove is guilty of something much worse than cultural stupidity. He made a deliberate decision to create a leadership vaccum in NOLA, because he did not want to alienate the Southern Right Wing Voting Base so close to the all important 2006 elections.
Why does W. never ever go to NAACP meetings? Why does he avoid Congressional Black Causus meetings whenever possible? Why was Colin Powell treated like a step-child in his administration? We all know the answer. W. must not be seen giving aid to the "enemy" of a voting block which is very faithful to him, white southern voters who vote Republican so that they can get school vouchers to get their kids into all white schools and cut taxes in the mistaken belief that blacks get more welfare than whites and eliminate affirmative action and reinstitute Jim Crow and Poll Taxes. |W. is "Leader" of that group and one of their enemies, besides muslims, is Blacks.
So, it was absolutely impossible, in political terms, for the White House to appoint a Leader who would empathize and cry and care for and support and fight for the poor people of New Orleans who were drowning because the majority of them were african-american. And Karl Rove was convinced that the Right Wing Base would desert W. in the next election, staying home rather than going to the polls to keep Congress Republican, if Republicans valued black lives as much as white.
Boy, did Karl Rove misread the South. He forgot that the white
South is inlove with the myth of its own benevolence towards those less fortunate than itself. The white South sees itself as the protector of children and aged women of all colors. It is the land of knights that Europe is no longer pure enough to contain. Maybe some northern racist's will look at what the administration did to NOLA and smirk, but they are going to have to look hard to find southerners who will applaud.
Karl Rove is a moron, after all, just not the way I first thought.