Saturday, January 21, 2006

The Party of Rove

The funniest line of the day is brought to us (via Kevin Drum) by the New York Times. It isn't this one:

For 26 minutes, after calling for civility in politics in a packed speech before the Republican National Committee, Mr. Rove offered a lacerating attack on Democrats...
That's a pretty funny line and all, but it lacks subtlety (I mean really--I was laughing after 'calling for civility'; the 'lacerating attack' part is completely unnecessary).

Nor is it this one:
In his speech, Mr. Rove made no mention of his own legal situation.
Again...perfectly on target, but it's just a little too obvious.

The funniest line of the day is this one:
Mr. Rove's speeches this early in an election year have proved to be accurate predictors of what Republican candidates would say in the fall...
Well, yes...in the sense that a deponent's words are an 'accurate predictor' of what the court reporter transcribes. Those people weren't listening to a speech; they were taking dictation.

The Republicans are the Party of Rove.

The RNC propaganda apparat has done a tremendous job of labeling Democrats as the party of Howard Dean. While I agree that the news media have been grossly unfair to Dean (and I think overall, he is moving the party in positive directions), he has said some genuinely dumb and embarrassing things...and the Republicans have been very effective at making the party as a whole pay for them.

But here's Rove, under investigation by the special prosecutor, tied to Abramoff via Susan Ralston, hip-deep in the politics of sleaze, with far more power over the Republican party as a whole than Dean has over the Democrats...and we still haven't managed to hang him around his party's neck. Googling "dean democrats", I get 25,500 hits; "rove republicans" yields a paltry 747. (And yes, part of is a double standard in the news media; but those are the rules we're playing with, unfair though they are.)

We need to make Rove the party's first name. We need to tie everything any Republican says in a House or Senate race back to Rove's January 20 speech. Rove shows in this speech why despite it all, he's still an asset to his party; we need to make him a liability. We need to make sure that when and if the indictments come (or even if they don't, and Rove remains under ethical taint) nobody gets to scurry away from him.

[That's all, folks]