Rove Wins Hearts and Minds in Aspen

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/billy-kimball/rove-wins-hearts-and-mind_b_24674.html

Billy Kimball

07.09.2006

Rove Wins Hearts and Minds in Aspen

READ MORE: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Iraq, CIA, Karl Rove, Investigations, 2006

It was a kinder, gentler, downright cuddly Karl Rove who appeared this morning before 500 people including Former Federal Reserve Charirman Alan Greenspan, Maine Senator Susan Collins, Venture Capitalist John Doerr, Justice Stephen Breyer, and 500 other seekers after truth at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The crowd, like the mobs that gather on "The Simpsons" occasionally cheered and booed very specific remarks but generally followed the polite lead of Rove's interlocutor, Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson.

Rove, for his part, after acknowledging that he was a bit of a hot head, kept his cool, sounding more like Bill Moyers than Sean Hannity. With regard to his notorious dirty tricks campaigns against Max Cleland and John McCain he explained how, in context, these were merely well warranted efforts to set the record straight. He conceded that he didn't know exactly when life began (a remark that PBS' Gwen Ifill, speaking from the audience, thought his evangelical allies might take issue with) but that he was uncomfortable with the mad science project he called "embryo farming," a.k.a stem cell research. Well armed with statistics, he defended the administration - and, it must be conceded, did so artfully - on the economy (he was clearly buoyed by today's news on higher-than-expected tax revenues which he credited to the Administration's relentless tax cutting), immigration, Iraq, and North Korea. Asked if he had any regrets about the last six years, he conceded that yes, duh, of course he did but he didn't plan to share them with the audience and, by extension, readers of the Huffington Post. When delays, disappointments, and failures were acknowledged in general terms, the blame was laid on Congress and the courts.

Delivering a question posed by Bill Clinton two nights before, Walter asked Rove what Rove would have done if Clinton's Chief of Staff had blown the cover of a CIA covert operative in order to punish her husband for telling the public a truth that the Administration preferred it not know. Rove took his recent toothskin thin exoneration and ran with it, saying that, had such a thing occurred, he would have condemned it in the strongest terms and demanded that the hypothetical Chief of Staff be summarily fired. If on the other hand, such a charge had been thoroughly investigated and found to be utterly groundless, then people of good faith should respect the judgment fairly rendered by our system and get on with their lives. An attempt to follow up was lazily rebuffed with the standard-issue "can't comment on an on-going investigation" routine.

Rove made a faux pas that drew a few titters when he said, in the course of telling an anecdote that harkened to his own hardscrabble immigrant heritage as a Norwegian-American (who knew?), he revealed that there is a little known and, he said, rarely used library in the White House. That, at least, rang very true. ........

Rove quote:


"he revealed that there is a little known and, he said, rarely used library in the White House. That, at least, rang very true."

This statement is unclear. What Library is Rove referring too. The article doesn't say.
Does he mean a Federalist Library?

The Aspen trees in Aspen are dying.

Could it be nuclear waste contamination killing the tree roots?

with the international press.The boom was lowered on his worthless ass when a reporter informed him that he would be tried for war crimes.

Rove won't be having the last laugh.

(snip)
Rove appeared to be on the defensive on questions about Guantanamo, the Valerie Plame affair, Iraq and other issues.

Rove made jokes about his hecklers and at one point referred to them as "people who fly in and out of Aspen in their jets." But he had his moments with the crowd as well, drawing applause now and then, and silencing it with the comment, "Republicans will keep their majorities in the House and Senate."

(snip)
As for the Plame affair, Rove stumbled and then refused to answer.

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20060710/NEWS/107100027/-1/rss01

What will demos do to stop it?