I‘ve been trying to figure out what the big fuss was over Karl Rove’s remarks reported over the last day or two. The biggest problem with how Democrats reacted, as I see it, is that they’re not embracing what Rove said. It’s as if being told “you’re not willing to send troops to shoot brown-skinned people before you’ve accumulated evidence they’ve done anything wrong” was some sort of insult. The biggest distinction between the neo-cons and their opposition is that one believes in what amounts to vigilante justice, while one believes in the American idea of justice. The former is fine for movie screens and pulp novels, but not for maintaining any sort of order in the world. It’s a dead-end strategy in the long-run that will just lead to costly, perpetual war. And, I’d add, it’s markedly similar in its attitude and principles to those of the people who attacked this country to begin with. That’s a difference Democrats should embrace, not shy away from.
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Because Rove’s remark that “Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers” was a load of bullshit. After 9/11, virtually everyone was on board with finding and destroying the terrorists responsible. But Rove is confusing (on purpose) Iraq with 9/11, suggesting that because Liberals want to win the hearts and minds of the average Iraqi, we want to be soft on terrorism, or more specifically, the 9/11 terrorists. It’s insulting and misleading, and a sign that obviously Bush’s groupies will still believe anything they’re told, even to the extent that Saddam personally flew all 4 jets on Septermber 11.
It’s character assassination when he tries to tell people what the “Liberals” were thinking, especially when what he says is misleading and a lie.
I wish “conservative” would become the profane word in the media vernacular that “liberal” has become. Then again, both of the words have been so thoroughly bastardized that they don’t mean anything anyway.
So Karl Rove is full of shit. We already knew that. All the Democratic outrage does is appear to validate what he said.
See: LBJ’s “Make the Bastard Deny It” strategy, as told by Hunter S. Thompson in a couple of his pieces. I’m citing it from Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 here:
Well, I’ll grant you that publicly telling him to resign may not have been the best strategic move the Dems could have made. But the Dems haven’t been good at making strategic moves since Johnson was president.
The question is, how do you combat this tactic?
Not that it matters since they don’t listen to me, but there were a couple of better ways to respond
better, IMO:* Don’t address it until a reporter asks, then deflect the question: “The statement rings hollow from an Administration that went into post-war Iraq with no plan, and who thereby unnecessarily endangered our troops. And, if you haven’t noticed, there’s still no indication they have any idea how to finish this operation. Here’s how I’d do it if the Republican leadership wanted to cooperate with my other Democratic colleagues and I…”
* Or, somewhat like what I wrote earlier, embrace the stereotype and spin it your own way. This is the Clear and Present Danger “We weren’t friends, we were life-long friends” strategy: “Karl Rove says my liberal colleagues and I are soft on terror because we don’t want to send American troops off to fill brown bogeymen full of holes without evidence of wrong-doing. Yeah, that about sums it up. I guess it’s not fashionable anymore to believe in fair trials and to have optimism in humanity. That would sound too much like the America I used to know.”
Maybe it’s late and those sound better because I’m tired, but it seems like anything would be better than the whiny crybaby bullshit they came up with.
Have you been drinking, sir?
Only a little at the time.
I attribute that more to it being almost 3 in the morning.
I kinda disagree with you here, Rusty.
It seems to me that this was the perfect opportunity to stand firm. When a reporter asks about it, don’t deflect, but say “I’d ask Karl Rove to come say that to my face.” We SHOULD get angry, we SHOULD muscle up… We should challenge this administration (who’s obviously doing this for a purpose) to substantiate what they are saying.
But we shouldn’t do it in our typical “I’d ask for Mr. Rove to show me the facts… to that end I’ve called together a hearing to look into the possibility that liberals aren’t, in fact, people who hate America…” sort of way… We should get indignant, we should get pissed off, and we should get up in their face about this.
He just called us murderers and traitors, and he did it from the White House. Those words have weight, and we shouldn’t play with them, we should shove them down their throats.
One thing the neo-cons and the theocrats have gotten very good at is deflecting a question and making it sound like a principled answer at the same time. My examples were written in a drowsy haze and may not have been great, but I maintain that whining and crying about what a big doodyhead Karl Rove is only plays into his hands. Getting pissed off is good, but indignant is bad because it reflects fear and weakness. Fact is, there IS a fundamental difference in how the neo-cons and their opponents respectively define justice. There’s nothing more un-American to me than the idea of a preemptive doctrine and of sacrificing individual rights to the government out of fear of invisible bogeyman who occasionally crawl out of their caves to wreak havoc. It’s a sham and a power grab, and has been from day one.
I understand your point, Rusty… I just think that playing politics with this one isn’t the way to go (as I mentioned in my post at SRWU). But the reason we don’t need to play politics is because this is one that, as long as we don’t come across as whiny, we can just fight back with. I know Rove’s got intentions by doing this (it wasn’t a “mistake” on his part), but we can play this one correctly by simply daring him to show the balls that he says we don’t have.
Thanks for helping smack down the troll at my place, by the way.
Who didn’t want to join the military on September 11th??? We really were all united- they (the Bush people)fucked it all up, and they still are. Even when UBL got away twice that was all right. We were still together. Iraq was the catalyst for the re-division.