John Cole over at Balloon Juice blames Karl Rove for the attack politics that eventually alienated so many people that the Republican Party is unlikely to win anything bigger than dog catcher in the next election. The problem is that Rove's politics were not invented by Rove. I remember Rush Limbaugh viciously attacking opponents of Ronald Reagan back in the 1980's, and anybody remember Lee Atwater and the Willie Horton ad? That ad got Poppy Bush elected, and was as vicious a slander as anything ever put forth by Rove.
You can blame Rove all you want. But the fact of the matter is that Rove was a symptom, not a cause. The principled Republican Party of Barry Goldwater was dead by 1968 when the vile, venal criminal Richard Nixon got elected over LBJ Lite Humphrey, dead of a disease that says, "the end justifies the means." Once you fall over that waterfall, there ain't no swimming back up it -- you're going down, down, down into the moral abyss. The whole Iran-Contra thing, where we find out that the CIA was helping the Contras smuggle crack cocaine into Los Angeles in order to fund their activities (if you wonder what I'm talking about, the DEA was closing in on some of the Contras and the CIA ordered them to back off, which implies that they knew darn well what the Contras were doing) is just an example of the kind of moral abyss that you end up in the moment you start with "the end justifies the means". The entire Bush II administration just went over the waterfall with the rest of the party, it is only the fact that there is no strong leader at the top (unlike the Reagan and Bush I regimes) that makes it so clear and obvious.
The problem is that Goldwater was a miserable failure. Americans don't seem to want principled politics, was the lesson that the Republican Party took away from the 1964 election. Americans want attack politics, like LBJ's famous "Daisy" ad. And for 40 years, the Republicans have given Americans what the Republican Party thinks they want. And for most of those 40 years they've done quite well at it. The departure of Rove, methinks, changes nothing in that regard. All this was true before Rove showed up, and will be true on September 1 when Rove leaves the building. All that changes is the face at the top, not the entire strategy of dirty politics and the end justifies the means.
- Badtux the Morality Penguin
Karl Rove, to me, was just Lee Atwater taken to the obvious and ultimate conclusion. If the Republicans continue to utilize Rove's politics for their own ends after Rove is gone, I don't think it would be an extension of Rove's politics. I think it will be the natural behavior of a party of damned fools who would rather go on being damned fools than a party willing to admit that they were played for the damned fools that they are. Republicans tend to suck at introspection, self-awareness, and integrity.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, they suck at politics, too...
And,,,, Republican or Democrat, the next big nuts and capitalists are working their way to the top of the pile.
ReplyDeletePolitics in this country is bullshit anyway you look at it. It's just the Roman empire reborn here and posing as democracy. You do see that don't you?