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Rove’s True November 2nd Surprise

Oct 23 at 3:03pm by Anonymous

Karl Rove

It wasn’t Bill Clinton and it wasn’t Nader. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton nor Howard Dean. Neither Kucinich nor Al Gore. It was Karl Rove who awoke the sleeping giant of the American Left. Ironically, he doesn’t see this, which underscores why he’s not a genius—evil or otherwise. Rather, he’s a tragic fool who will be blamed for helping marginalize the GOP for the next 30 years. It’s amazing what Rove, an ardent student of history, cannot see. But bigger mistakes have been made in Western political history..

The Soviets for too much of the 1930s welcomed the rise of Nazi Germany. The Communists’ radicalized worldview told them their way would thrive even better in an industrialized Germany once Nazism – a mere symptom of capitalism – failed. The tragic punch line, of course, is that by the time Nazism really got itself going, the Russians couldn’t stop it without paying the price in millions of lives.

The lesson of this factoid isn’t about Communism nor Nazism as much as it is about human nature when blinded by ideology. It was a stunning miscalculation, as we’re seeing now with Rove’s assertion that he’s going to transform the Republicans into the majority party for the next 30 years. He’s not; he’s going to assure the GOP a minority status for a generation to come.

Our nation is just ending a thirty year cycle of Republican dominance that began with Nixon, was briefly thrown off course by a little scandal called Watergate, but moved full stream ahead for 22 years under Reagan, Bush the Elder who continued Reagan’s flirtation with fascism and, for 8 years, under Clinton who did everything to advance the Republican pro-business, deregulation agenda.

But Rove can’t see that. Rove drinks deeply from the well of persecution sensed by all disgruntled Republicans from Nixon’s time. The persecution fantasy is the same reason why so much rightwing posturing and propaganda has the air of an edgy, “fed-up with liberals� defense. Persecution and estrangement was the feeling among devoted Republicans after Nixon stepped down. Nixon’s 1972 campaign was, as we all know, when Rove first cut his teeth in national politics. Moreover, that’s when the seeds of the Republican revolution were planted. The same seeds that gave us a network of think tanks, of readymade pundits and right-leaning opinion proffers on Sunday morning talk shows. Everything, in fact, that has framed the political discussion in America for the last 30 years.

But with the GOP in control of the three branches of the government the “fed up with liberals� line is, at best, a pose. Quite an unsatisfying one at that. Especially for an electorate living with the consequences of right-wing mismanagement. The urge to accuse liberals when Republicans are confronted with trouble of their own making is only excuse-making writ large.

The underlying truth of the matter is the Republican agenda is simply not popular enough to carry the GOP forward further. The Republicans, according to Rove, should be growing more popular with an ever-widening slice of the electorate in 2004; but Bush couldn’t even win the popular vote in 2000. The Republicans couldn’t win the 2002 mid-terms without cheating in Texas by funneling illegal corporate contributions into political campaigns. (See Tom Delay’s current ethics commission problems). Upon winning, Texas Republicans called an unpopular special session in the State House to cement their victory for years to come through a redistricting battle. In California, they pulled a fast one on the sitting Democratic governor—citing Bush v. Gore, by the way—to seize power.

And they call this winning?

Technically, I suppose it is. But it’s not anything like winning with the support of the citizens, which is what it takes to stay in power in a democracy. It’s not like winning comfortably. Confidently. It’s not the kind of winning that will last.

The Republicans are desperate. They will try anything, legal or otherwise, to win again in 2004. But they’re going to be surprised by the new militancy of Democrats and liberals a like.

For that reason, Rove has the Secret Service screen out all dissenters from the crowds appearing at Bush’s campaign stops. Those who are admitted must sign loyalty oaths. (Sounds real American, doesn’t?). If Bush was exposed to the real public he would be treated as he was on his inauguration day. You saw the footage of the eggs hitting his limo rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue.

What I mean to say is, we live in a time of total Republican political dominance but it looks much more like the last desperate grasp of a party about to exit the political stage for good. The Republicans can barely keep the populace down. Stories about 250% surges in the registration of voters in Democratic precincts in swing states foreshadow a different America after Nov. 2, 2004.

Rove either can’t see this or refuses to. Yet Rove’s shortcomings are larger than this. Most of his direct mail and political consulting experience comes from clients in the Mid-west and South. The bulk of Rove’s campaign management experience comes from work in Texas and Alabama: two states trending conservative at the time. Rove knows winning in familiar territory but he’s in way over his head on a national scale. He’s a naïve and dangerous provincial in this way, who understands nothing of the motives of the other side.

Does he know, for instance, that nearly a century ago in states that had enforced segregation, farmers crossed racial lines to form cooperatives to protect themselves from the predatory business practices of big business? Does he understand that during the Depression, the New Deal sought to help Americans regardless of their color or ethnic background? No. Such matters and the motivation to do these things baffle him. He would write them off as examples of an aberrant idealism, yet these events happened precisely at America’s most desperate moments. Rove doesn’t understand that the true culture war in America is the endless question: how much of a culture of freedom do we have? How often can the citizens be duped into ceding their rights? With what righteous indignation will they reclaim it? These are the true questions of the American people. One thing is certain: Americans will not be satisfied to live under eternal fear. They will not be satisfied with a secretive, evasive presidency with ties to foreign powers (like, say, the Saudis). It’s a culture that, even should Bush win, will not rest until transparency and integrity is restored to government.

Rove is still operating on the antiquated Southern Strategy that came about in the time of his political education. The Southern Strategy was developed in a time of white flight from the cities, bussing and federally enforced desegregation. Apparently, he hasn’t noticed that bussing has ended, the city centers are repopulating, and the people in the suburbs want not just national security, but economic, health and environmental security. Because Rove rode into power on the now-fossilized strategy of Nixon’s campaign he’s shown little ability to adapt to the changes of this time. He’s a one-trick pony, who is adept at raising tensions between voting blocks, but is oblivious to the deeper history of the nation.

Rove likes to cite President McKinley’s ability to appeal to urban and minority voters in the election 1896 as a precedent for Bush’s 2004 victory. But Rove doesn’t need to look that far back. He need only look back to his parents’ generation: The GI generation.

The Generation that grew up in the time of the Depression and went on to fight WWII knew intimately what a world of war and inequality meant. They made up the moral and electoral backbone of the Democratic party. What FDR did for the country through the Depression and into WWII, assured that the Democratic Party was the default party, the mainstream party, the checks-on-power party.

In contrast to Reagan, whose legacy was that he “made people feel good� FDR and the Democrats of yore actually did good. This is what made the legacy of the New Deal so damnably hard to defeat for so long by Republicans. The Dems delivered. This is why the apex of the Republican revolution, which is drawing to a close, was Reagan’s two terms. But an important reading of the Reagan legacy, especially in regards to the sought after Reagan Democrats is the simple fact that Baby Boomers were too old for their youthful talk of revolution and but not satisfied with the unpleasant truths the Democrats had to offer in 1980. The Baby Boomers, true to their roots, opted to feel good. They crossed party the lines to vote for Gipper. Karl Rove should not be looking for a “feel good� vote in 2004.

In fact, the psychic damage Bush, under Rove’s direction, has done to the American electorate has added insult to the injury of 9/11 by exploiting what happened on that day to create an atmosphere likely to be associated with Republicans for years to come. Rove might be surprised to learn that, pre-Bush, liberals like me enjoyed discussing politics with my conservative counterparts. Outside of Washington, there was civility between liberals and conservatives in a time when just finding someone who cared about politics could mean more than finding someone to agree with.

But that’s gone. In its place is anger and resentment. Suspicion and doubt.

Americans don’t like being at each other’s throats day after day. They don’t like shouting matches with their fellow citizens. Americans don’t like living in a world defined by fear and stark choices, made under unforgiving circumstances.

I’m not sure Rove can understand this. Yet, I believe this anger, frustration and resentment was a part of life in the 1930s. Certainly FDR thrived as he fought the root causes of such turmoil. Voters reacted favorably. “Nothing to fear but fear itself� were FDR’s words not after Pearl Harbor but years earlier at his inauguration.

If Karl Rove really wants a lesson from history to inform the current situation, he doesn’t have to look back a century. He’d be well served to look at the legacy of the FDR Democrat generation. Each succeeding generation is a reaction to what came before it. You could make the argument that the rise of Clinton and the DLC coincided with the decline of the influence of the FDR voters in the Democratic Party. With fewer FDR Democrats around to keep the party focused on bread and butter issues of political and economic power, Baby-boomer Democrats fell for the image-rich social wedge issues framed by the Republicans. Liberals through these years have pretended that if they just ignore the angry, aggressive Republican Party, it would simply go away. What that got them—and the world–was the Bush Administration, rightwing radicalism and consequently, this mess in Iraq. Now, with their backs against the wall; liberals are in the fighting mode for the first time in, well, a generation.

For voters coming of age in this extreme time, the realities of the Bush Years will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not unlike the experience the Depression had in shaping the political conscience of the FDR Democrats.

Young people today are facing an excessive national debt, a possible reinstatement of the draft, college costs spiraling out of reach, jobs moving overseas as they migrate to cheaper labor markets, and corruption throughout the federal government. They will be voting against inequality and for checks on power for the rest of their lives. The one person who masterminded this political wake up and its call to arms is Karl Rove. He has no one but himself to thank.