Rove:"The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008."

WP
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15676131/

Rove remains steadfast in the face of criticism
President's strategist may be down after election but he's not out of a job

By Peter Baker
Updated: 8:23 a.m. ET Nov 12, 2006

WASHINGTON - For a man still climbing out of the rubble, Karl Rove seemed in his usual unflappable mood. He roamed around his windowless West Wing office decorated with four Abraham Lincoln portraits, joking with his staff, stuffing copies of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" into his bag and signing the last paperwork of the day.

The Architect, as President Bush once called him, has a theory for why the building fell down. "Get me the one-pager!" he cried out to an aide, who promptly delivered a single sheet of paper that had been updated almost hourly since the midterm elections with a series of statistics explaining that the "thumping" Bush took was not such a thumping after all.

The theory is this: The building's infrastructure was actually quite sound. It was bad luck and seasonal shifts in the winds that blew out the walls -- complacent candidates, an ill-timed Mark Foley page scandal and the predictable cycles of history. But the foundation is fine: "The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008."

The rest of Washington might think Tuesday's elections were a repudiation of Rove's brand of politics, but Rove does not. For years, he has been the center of hyperbolic attention -- called the genius, the electoral mastermind, the most powerful presidential adviser in a century, Bush's brain, the master of the dark arts of wedge politics, the Republican Moses leading conservatives out of the desert.

The mythology grew to such an outsized degree that when Rove insisted again and again during the campaign that Republicans would win despite the odds, fearful Democrats convinced themselves that he must have known something they did not and waited for an October surprise to spring. Rove encouraged that with supreme confidence. "You are entitled to your math, and I'm entitled to the math," he told a National Public Radio interviewer who suggested Democrats might win.

THE numbers was in reference to his comments that the polls were wrong, and he had THE numbers in this election to prove that the Republicants would keep the house and the senate this year.

is that the numbers can be "fixed". And if KKKARL is all that, he will learn alot from his humiliating defeat, so I'm just prepping myself.

*

Your arrogance will be your undoing yet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2695877&mesg_id=2695877

and you're lucky you still have a job, Karl.

:headbang:
rocknation

for his Party to champion, and some new occultic doctrine to evangelize the Believers with.

I dunno, but this past election says there isn't enough of either left.

2008 has the Republicans eliminated from contention in the '04 Blue States and marginal in a variety of crucial '04 Red States. They're not a majority party anymore, either, so it's about getting just enough to win the Electoral College- a 2000 variety of prevailing. I doubt that they can win back majorities in Congress by that point, whatever the pretensions and denial now. 2008 is a last ditch defense of the present variety of Republicanism, which dates back to Nixon.

2008 looks to be about Democrats breaking down the Red/Blue divide decisively. To fight that, Rove (or his equivalent for their '08 candidate) will have to tap into the very last reservoirs of anti-snob classism, racism, bigotry, resentments, and occultism in the South, the Plains States, and the Great Basin.

I think that means Republicans attacking non-Cuban Hispanics and Native Americans, on the one side, and a doctrine of Apocalypse (i.e. Liberalz 'n' Terrarists Are Going To End Our Way Of Life!!!!) on the other. There will of course be underground efforts to rally against Modernity, abortion rights, gay rights, atheists, non-Christians, scientists, and black and Asian people as per usual.

If this looks more like a political group suicide attempt than a serious politics, well...it is. To end this particular chapter in its/our history, the Republican Party has to return fully to its premises, First Principles, and historical roots. Which are the economic and social colonialism of the Settlement (Conquest).

Not that I think it will work. I do suspect this stuff will be tried out piecemeal over the next two years and fail or backfire. In 2008 they'll have to run very moderate to be able to compete at all. (Watching McCain go extremist and disqualifying himself in the process is good fun to me, btw.) I just don't see how their Party can even hold together anymore- it's turning so fragile, a new surge of power might actually blow its parts and fuses.

the failed Bush war on Iraq. They've been all set up. And there is enough truth to it--what with AIPAC, the NeoCons, and Democrats like Lieberman, etc.--to stir up one hell of a hate campaign to throw blame off the Bushites and the Republican Party for the Iraq disaster.

I've been saying for some time that the alliance of Israel's rightwingers with the despised Bush Junta is a potential disaster for Israel, that the Bushites are the most treacherous of allies, and would abandon Israel in a cold minute, if they saw profit in it, that their real buds are the Saudi/Kuwaiti/UAE sultans, and that the rightwing 'christian' nutballs that the Bush Junta has stirred up would just as soon burn Jews at the stake--as gays, women or brown immigrants.

But nobody listens to me. Just an old U.S. citizen here, looking at all this, having lived through a number of wars, and the deadly growth of Corporate Rule. I've also had little hints (personal stories) of how hard it is for mainstream (peaceful, liberal) Jews to say anything, given their deep emotional and historical attachment to Israel, and how vulnerable Israel is, as a tiny medieval fortress, bristling with armaments, surrounded by hostile neighbors. Now they've even built A Wall. How can anybody live that way? How can Israel survive, be safe and prosper as an armed fortress--and its only ally, the despised Bush Junta? The militarists and war profiteers may have won, in Israel--but it was the same kind of "win" that Rumsfeld had in Iraq, and that George Bush had in the 2004 election: a pyhrric victory, built on ashes, bad dreams and unspeakable corruption. Not a thing that lives and breathes--or makes a prosperous free people. Endless war.

I think that's what Rove and the Dark Lords might do: blame the Jews for the Iraq War, and leave Israel to its fate--maybe as a gift to the Bin Ladens.

Also, I want to point out just WHO will be "counting" all of our votes in 2008, under a veil of corporate secrecy--if we don't do something about it NOW. Please take special note of corporation no. 2:

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich.

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. As we've since learned, these machines are extremely insecure and insider hackable. One hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace--that's all it takes. And company directors and employees and programmers are beholden to filthy rich men who want to hang gays, and who are part of the gang of masters thieves known as the Republican Party. You don't think these bastards--and the fascists who control the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--aren't capable of turning the Iraq disaster into a "Jewish war"--and scapegoating wealthy Jewish liberals and other powerful Jews, as well as Jewish NeoCons (who led poor little Bush astray), Israeli spies and the Israel lobby? It's not that these things don't bear examination. They do. But I'm not talking about reasonable policy discussion (or rightful prosecution of corruption). I'm talking about SCAPEGOATING, WITCH-BURNING, BIGOTRY, LIES, aimed at getting the Republicans out of this mess quickly, in Rove's typical fashion: blaming others.

It's also important to recognize that Rove doesn't "win" elections, he pre-writes election scenarios, with post-election "explanations" of why they "won." Bushites don't win elections; they STEAL elections, by placing operatives like Katherine Harris in charge of vote counting, having James Baker fix the Supreme Court, suppressing millions of Democratic votes, dirty tricks of every kind, pouring billions of dollars into TV ads to create the "memes' they need to explain everything later, and, recently, by direct intervention via "trade secret" vote counting. So, whatever scapegoating scenario they plan for '08, keep in mind that it is not an election strategy; it is a PLAUSIBLE NARRATIVE.

The third major election theft industry player, SEQUOIA, hired former Calif. Secretary of State, Republican Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--in an outstanding example of the highly corrupt practice of "revolving door" employment, one of a number of corrupt practices that were used to fast-track these insecure, secretly coded, hackable voting systems all over the country, in a very short period of time (2002-2004), including lavish lobbying of election officials and legislators, a $3.9 billion federal porkbarrel for e-voting contracts, secret industry "testing" of the machines, and corporate lawyers writing our election laws.

All of this was engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by corporatist 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd). Its goal was a completely non-transparent vote counting system in the 2004 election (to create an artificial Bush win, as an endorsement of torture, unjust war and tax cuts for the rich).

It's still in place.

Our Corporate Rulers apparently decided not to use this election theft capability so extensively in 2006, but I think they did use it, in both the primaries and general election--in combination with other tactics--to carefully craft a new Congress that is hamstrung by a contingent of "Bushite Democrats" (like those who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus a few weeks ago). The vote of the American people was probably so overwhelmingly against the Iraq War and Bush--opinion polls show SEVENTY PERCENT opposition--that maybe it got a bit out of hand. Maybe they didn't intend for the Dems to end up with committee chairs in the House or Senate. Who knows? (That's the problem with SECRET vote tabulation--you can't ever know for sure.) But we'd be fools not to realize WHY this Congress--refreshing as the change is--is STILL so unrepresentative of the American people.

It's partly the filthy campaign contribution system. It's partly the 4 million black, poor and other Dem voters purged or suppressed (Greg Palast estimate). It's partly the 5 rightwing billionaire CEOs who control all news and opinion. And then, in addition to all that, they can tweak the system DIRECTLY, in a big way, or very selectively, to create results to their purposes. For instance, in the teeth of 70% opposition to the war and to Bush, if they'd stolen these elections outright, in a big way, they might have lost their election theft capability to an outraged citizenry. (The citizenry was pretty outraged at the voting system already--huge number of voters voted by Absentee Ballot, trying to get around the rigged electronics.) Caution prevailed. Democrats got majorities--but majorities whose first words were: "Impeachment is off the table." Whether you consider that to be clever strategy, or something else--did it have to be put quite that way--as a final rip-up of the Constitution?

What we're likely to see next is plan after plan for "withdrawal" from Iraq, and a lot of fireworks, and a few sops to the poor--but the continued presence of huge U.S. military forces in the Middle East (in Iraq or around it), and no real reform. And we're still be wide open to a "Gulf of Tonkin"-type incident in the Middle East, that will draw us into war with Iran. How much faith do you have that this new Congress would not be sucked in? That's how much faith you should have in secret corporate vote counting.

Here's how it might play out: The Iraq disaster will be blamed on Rumsfeld and "the Jewish conspiracy" who together misled Bush. Bush will be obliged to respond to a contrived Iranian attack on U.S. forces (probably in the Mediterranean, to suck in European allies). We'll be at war in '08. The Dems will nominate someone who pledges to end it "with honor." The Repubs will nominate someone who pledges to "win it this time" (having learned not to trust Jews). The "meme" in the corporate news monopolies will be, "Yeah! Jews don't know how to win wars. Look at Lebanon! They misled us on Iraq. They said, 'don't bring too many troops--it'll spook our Arab friends.' But we won't make that mistake on Iran! This time, we nuke 'em and get it over with!" Diebold/ES&S will (s)elect the Repub, and a gaggle of Bushite "pod people" in Congress. The post-election narrative may go like this: 'Americans, angry at how Israel got us entangled in the Middle East, which prompted this attack on our forces by Iran, just wanted it to be over with--and voted for the guy who promised to get it over with quickly." And Israel--fools that they are, to ally themselves with the Bush Cartel--could well be lost in the conflagration. No tears shed by the Bushites and OUR war profiteers. Better all around for the Saudi princes (who, in any case, would move Mecca to Paraguay, to avoid the radiation). And "Homeland Security" has meanwhile been investigating Jewish banks and is starting to seize Jewish assets.

I know that this sounds like a fantastic scenario. But think back to 1999, and what you might have imagined then, about the next six years. Is it so fantastic? I'm thinking it's not. Anyway, anti-semitism is something to think about as Rove's next dirty trick.

------------------

What can we do?

I think we need to mobilize all those new Absentee Ballot voters--maybe of whom were BOYCOTTING the machines--for a campaign of public pressure on LOCAL election officials, to, a) HAND COUNT all the AB votes, and b) POST the results BEFORE any electronics are involved. Get the ball rolling--toward a transparent vote count in '08. I think it will snowball. (There was a huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting this time.) And I wouldn't wait around for the Senate, with its razor-thin margin, to gut HR 550 (a fairly decent election reform bill in the House) before it passes (or doesn't--or get vetoed!). (You think Bush will sign a bill that eliminates "trade secret" programming in the voting machines--if it makes it out of the Senate? I don't.)

your games and Poppy may convince Junior to sack you, the way he did when you were on his campaign staff.

is taking over jr's last two years of his administration.

The "mythology" about Rove has been largely promulgated, orchestrated and believed by the ignorant insiders who talk only to each other at their swell cocktail parties, and who believe everything they tell themselves. When someone babbles delusionally about the Bush administration or the neocons creating their own reality, they nod and take it down as gospel truth. The only people then jolted by reality are Rove and the people he's deluded.

And now, even now, as Rove's dream of a permanent majority and a triumphant Bush presidency is gone come the dawn like any other dream, there are still those (and it appears that Peter Baker the author of this article is one) who listen worshipfully and believe. It was just bad luck. Oh, and Mark Foley. Don't forget to blame the queers.

He is out of touch with reality.

saying that Rove was telling Bush at 8pm on election night that they would still win.

I don't think he will direct another presidential campaign-did that twice. I believe that as the Bush presidency winds down, he will take his millions and become a commentator for Faux News. Kind of like Carville and Begala.