The Blue State

Rove and Bartlett subpoenaed

Newsweek magazine reported late Friday that Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett, who White House employees, have been subpoenaed by Scooter Libby's defense team.  As Michael Isikoff explains, this could be bad for Rove:

Both Rove and Bartlett have already received trial subpoenas fromLibby’s defense lawyers, according to lawyers close to the case whoasked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. While thatis no guarantee they will be called, the odds increased this week afterLibby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, laid out a defense resting on the idea thathis client, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, hadbeen made a “scapegoat” to protect Rove. Cheney is expected to providethe most crucial testimony to back up Wells’s assertion, one of thelawyers close to the case said. The vice president personally penned anOctober 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one stafferand sacrifice the other.” The note, read aloud in court by Wells,implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clearRove of any role in leaking the identity of CIA operative ValeriePlame, wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson. “Wow, for all the talk aboutthis being a White House that prides itself on loyalty and discipline,you’re not seeing much of it,” the lawyer said.

This is absolutely huge because it signals that a war has begun between the Vice President's office and Karl Rove.  The only possible defense that Libby's lawyers could come up with was that he was being set up by Karl Rove.  If Rove is interviewed on the witness stand, Libby's lawyers will try to make him look like the suspect -- an attempt to encourage the jury to be more sympathetic of their client.  If I were Rove, I would be worried.  His testimony might prove that he was actually the leaker.

Rove can only get last laugh by polluting the tone

Republican strategist Karl Rove will not be resigning.  After all, he wants the last laugh.  By saving President Bush's legacy, he might be able to save his own.  Rove will do it the only way he knows how -- not through consensus-building or building bridges with the other side of the isle, but by increasing the Administration's already hyper-partisan rhetoric.

Think of it this way: you don't hire a ultimate fighting champion to star in a romantic comedy.  Karl Rove doesn't know how to be bipartisan.  It would be contrary to his own play book.  Rove will do what he does best -- smear the Democratic majorities in the legislative branch as much as possible, painting them as anything from unpatriotic to socialist.  His gloves are off.  Already, we are seeing some discouraging signs:

Things have not gotten off to a great start since the election.Democrats are taking Mr. Rove’s continued influence at the White House— as well as some of its recent moves, like nominating conservativejudges for the federal bench — as a sign that Mr. Bush’s conciliatorypledges of bipartisanship will prove to be fleeting.

“Karl’s rolehas not been to serve as a bridge over troubled waters; he has tried tostir the waters as often as possible,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin,the Illinois Democrat who will be the second-most powerful person inthe Senate next year. “Maybe he got religion on Nov. 7, but we’ll see.”

However, according to one source, Rove may leave "within weeks."  However, many would agree that he wants one more shot at the Democrats.  It's not just Bush's legacy that he is worried about -- it is his own.

Krugman: Modern conservative movement fundamentally undemocratic

This is from Paul Krugman's first article since the Democrats' election victory.  He says that Karl Rove's brand of conservatism is miles apart ideologically from the old Eisenhower conservatism in terms of how it interprets democracy:

Why do I want to see movement conservatism crushed? Partly becausethe movement is fundamentally undemocratic; its leaders don't acceptthe legitimacy of opposition. Democrats will only become acceptable,declared Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform,once they "are comfortable in their minority status." He added, "Anyfarmer will tell you that certain animals run around and areunpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy andsedate."

And the determination of the movement to hold on to power at anycost has poisoned our political culture. Just think about the campaignthat just ended, with its coded racism, deceptive robo-calls, personalsmears, homeless men bused in to hand out deceptive fliers, and more.Not to mention the constant implication that anyone who questions theBush administration or its policies is very nearly a traitor.

When movement conservatism took it over, the Republican Party ceasedto be the party of Dwight Eisenhower and became the party of Karl Rove.The good news is that Karl Rove and the political tendency herepresents may both have just self-destructed.

I really don't know if I would go that far.  John McCain, Chuck Hagel, John Warner and Lindsey Graham tend to be from the old school of conservatism.  So maybe not everyone should be lumped into that category.  But I do agree that Karl Rove's breed of conservatism is more Machiavellian than democratic.  In fact, if you read the book The Prince, where Machiavelli gives advice to a king on how to suppress dissent in his country, and then realize that one of Rove's idols is Machiavelli, then you arrive at the same conclusion Krugman reached.

When we suppress opposing viewpoints, it contradicts what representative democracy is all about.  That was probably what Krugman was getting at.

Karl Rove confident in polling data he is getting

Policy-wise, I have always thought of Karl Rove as a right-wing nut.  But when it comes to winning elections, he is one of the best strategists out there.  During each election cycle, Rove is very silent about the polling and strategy aspects of ongoing races.  But in an interview with NPR, correspondent Robert Siegel got under Rove's skin, and the White House strategist went on a tirade about how he thinks that the Republican candidates in the Tennessee and Virginia Senate races are pulling away.

Here is an excerpt from this discussion on NPR:

SIEGEL: We are in the home stretch though and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about...

ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias or anything like that, you're just making a comment, right?

SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.

ROVE: No, you are not, no you're not, no you're not, you're not. I'mlooking at 68 polls a week [for candidates for the US House and USSenate, and Governor.]** You may be looking at 4 or 5 public polls aweek that talk about attitudes nationally but that do not impact theoutcome of individual races.

SIEGEL: If you could name races between, certainly Senate races, all...

ROVE: Like the poll today that showing Corker's ahead in Tennesseeor the poll showing Allen is pulling away in the Virginia Senate race.

SIEGEL: Leading Webb, in Virginia, yea...

ROVE: Yeah, exactly.

SIEGEL: ...you've seen the DeWine race and the Santorum race and, I don't want to...you call [the] races.

ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I addup to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with adifferent math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled toTHE math.

SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your...

ROVE: I said THE math.

Like him or not, Rove has every reason to be optimistic about Tennessee and Virginia -- maybe Virginia more so than Tennessee.  Harold Ford has responded to the racially-driven attacks on his character with a new ad.  However, it is still unclear if that particular ad will help Ford make up the ground he lost last week on Bob Corker.

And in Virginia, the only thing that helped James Webb was the fact that Allen's attacks on Webb's war book occurred at the end of the week, giving the media only one and a half news cycles to salivate over it.  Webb needs to get out there and respond immediately, or else he is done.

So again, Karl Rove's internal polling data on the Senate could be right -- and on the U.S. House too.  Although, I will be releasing my own objective report on Monday about every contested House race.  So we'll see how that goes.

What's the surprise going to be?

The Pensito Review is rumoring about Karl Rove's pledge last month for an October surprise:

On Sept. 21, Raw Story reported that Karl Rove was telling conservative groups that he had a surprisescheduled for the last two weeks of October that would turn themidterms in the Republicans’ favor.

Now, as mid-October approaches, we have to assume that Rove’s other shoe will drop within a week or so.

...What is Rove’s October surprise? As early as Sept. 8, we suggested that the Bush team could have captured or killed Osama bin Ladenrecently, and have been waiting to reveal this news closer to theelection. Others, including Buzzflash , had similar thoughts.

If I was in Las Vegas and I had to put $1,000 on what the October surprise will be, I would consider one of the following:

• The capturing or killing of Osama bin Laden
• The bombing of Iran
• The bombing of North Korea
• Some unknown Democratic operative knew about the Foley emails beforehand
• Something about Nancy Pelosi's past

Hmm.  Among those, I am not sure which one to pick.  Chances are it would be something foreign policy related.  If the October surprise happens and it is not one of the following, I will be shocked.

White House threatened Foley not to retire

There was a time earlier this year when Mark Foley planned on retiring after the 2006 election.  But according to a source that spoke to The New Republic, the White House convinced Foley to run by threatening him:

Yesterday, a source close to Foley explained to THE NEW REPUBLICthat in early 2006 the congressman had all but decided to retire fromthe House and set up shop on K Street. "Mark's a friend of mine," saysthis source. "He told me, 'I'm thinking about getting out of it andbecoming a lobbyist.'"

But when Foley's friend saw the Congressman again this spring,something had changed. To the source's surprise, Foley told him hewould indeed be standing for re-election. What happened? Karl Roveintervened.

According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by "theWhite House and Rove gang," who insisted that Foley run. If he didn't,Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.

full story

That is a perfect example of how the GOP walks in lock-step.  It's especially how the House ran business under the gauntlet of Tom DeLay.  Non-leadership Republicans could not vote their conscience.  They couldn't even think for themselves.  They were slaves to the party leadership -- and the party leadership was a slave to lobbyists on K-Street.  Read more about the GOP's K-Street Project.

New Rove strategy: Pretend Iraq never happened

Yes, it sounds far-fetched, especially due to the fact that most voters this November will be motivated to turn out because of their anger over the Iraq war.  But as Saturday's New York Times analyzes, the Rove game plan is to get in the Delorean, turn on the Flux Capacitor and travel back in time before the Iraq war -- pretending that 9/11 just happened, and that we don't have 2,600 dead soldiers in Iraq as a result of this presidency's ideology-at-all-cost foreign policy:

When President Bush and his top aides gathered in July to sketch outa strategy for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it wasclear to all that they had to try to reset the clock — back to a time,before Iraq, when portraying Mr. Bush as a steely commander in chiefwas a far simpler task, and before Hurricane Katrina, when questionsabout the administration’s competence did not weigh so heavily.      

Fromthose discussions emerged the speeches Mr. Bush has delivered over thelast week, the leading edge of a remarkably intensive and aggressivecampaign in which he has tried to regain ground he has lost for morethan two years, by turning the conversation away from Iraq and backtoward the broader war on terror.

It is a carefully calibratedstrategy that will continue in coming days, first with an appearanceSunday morning by Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the vehicle he used to advantage at keymoments after Sept. 11 and then Mr. Bush’s appearance that night atground zero in New York and a prayer service at St. Paul’s Chapel.

OnMonday, for the first time since the first anniversary, in 2002, Mr.Bush will visit all three sites of the attack that remade hispresidency — New York, Shanksville, Pa. and the Pentagon. Then he willcap the day and bring to a close this phase of his effort to portrayhimself and his party on his terms with a nationally televised speechfrom the Oval Office.

The more that I think of it, Sunday and Monday might be two days that will turn this campaign season upside down, putting the GOP out in front.  On Sunday, ABC will show the portion of the "Path to 9/11" that bashes Clinton and Democrats on the issue of terrorism.  Then on Monday, ABC will finish up the fictional drama with the half that portrays Bush as a strong leader, which will be interrupted midway through by a prime time address from the Oval Office.  There you have it: 48 hours worth of Bush political fiction.  Are you ready?

Why wiretap issue won't be difference-maker in November

I am more convinced than ever that the only way the GOP can stop a Democratic Party takeover of the House of Representatives is if a major outside event, which is definitely not out of the question, took place sometime in October.  Nothing else is going to work for them.  Why?  The GOP strategy this fall is to forgo the immigration issue and focus entirely on using the national security card to win votes.  At the top of the list is the topic of President Bush's domestic warrantless wiretap program.

However, even the wiretap issue might not work because the Republicans themselves are divided over the constitutional questions raised.  The House and Senate Republicans have completely different takes:

Republican leaders have planned to produce legislation by month'send that would give the administration as much latitude as possible tocontinue the program. But that effort may be splintering. The SenateJudiciary Committee will consider as many as four contradictory billson the issue tomorrow and could approve all of them. That would leaveit to Senate leaders and the White House to sort out how to proceed.

Meanwhile,House Republican leaders and the chairmen of the House Judiciary andintelligence committees are coalescing around surveillance legislationthat goes beyond legislation negotiated by Vice President Cheney andSenate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

"Youneed checks and balances in place to make sure future administrationsor even civil servants don't get out of line," said Rep. Heather A.Wilson (R-N.M.), sponsor of the main House surveillance bill. UnlikeSpecter's bill, she added, "my bill was not authorized by the WhiteHouse."

If this were 2003, Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico would have been told by Karl Rove to zip her lip or pay the price.  Today, as legislators fear an anti-GOP backlash in November, the White House is not in a position to control every single GOP lawmaker that wants to go his or her separate way.

If Wilson and other House Republicans stall President Bush's wiretap legislation, it will deal yet another blow to Karl Rove's plan of painting the Democrats as weak on national security.  In other for the GOP to be successful in thwarting a Democratic Party House takeover in November, they need to change the national mood.  A divided GOP about the constitutionality of domestic wiretaps will not be enough to change the national mood -- it's hard to argue with that.  What would change the national mood, for example, is if the military conveniently captured or killed Osama bin Laden.  As I stated above, an outside event like that is not out of the question at all.

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Other sites blogging about Bush's warrantless domestic wiretap program: The Newstandard, How Appealing, Tom Paine, Newsvine, Media Matters, Booman Tribune, Graphic Truth, The Unknown Candidate, Raw Story, Democratic Underground, Impeach Bush Coalition, The Modern Populist, In This Moment, We the People.

GOP gives up on immigration issue

You can close the book on immigration.  As the New York Times reports this morning, the GOP have decided to scrap plans for an immigration compromise and will instead focus on using our national security as a wedge issue for voters as we inch towards the November midterms:

As they prepare for a critical pre-election legislative stretch,Congressional Republican leaders have all but abandoned a broadoverhaul of immigration laws and instead will concentrate on national security issues they believe play to their political strength.    

With Congress reconvening Tuesday after an August break, Republicans inthe House and Senate say they will focus on Pentagon and domesticsecurity spending bills, port security legislation and measures thatwould authorize the administration’s terror surveillance program andcreate military tribunals to try terror suspects.

“We Republicans believe that we have no choice in the war against terror and the onlyway to do it is to continue to take them head-on whether it is in Iraqor elsewhere,” said Representative John A. Boehner  of Ohio, the majority leader.

A final decision on what do about immigration policy awaits a meetingthis week of senior Republicans. But key lawmakers and aides who setthe Congressional agenda say they now believe it would be politicallyrisky to try to advance an immigration measure that would showcaseparty divisions and need to be completed in the 19 days Congress isscheduled to meet before breaking for the election.

What is going on here?  Where is the GOP confidence that was showcased for us in 2002 and 2004?  Where is the swagger and arrogance?  If they had legislation that they needed passed, by God they would find a way to do it.  Now we are watching a divided party with a fringe wing battling to wrestle control.  If the GOP are divided like this, how can they get anything done at all as a majority.  They just gave Americans a better case to vote Democrat.

Rove held secret streetcorner meetings with Abramoff

According to the blog Raw Story, on Tuesday Dallas Morning News columnist Wayne Slater will preview a new book about to be released called The Architect: Karl Rove, and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.  In Tuesday's article, Slater will detail the secret meetings between Karl Rove and recently jailed Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.  Apparently Rove was afraid that their conversations would be recorded.

Raw Story previewed the Tuesday Dallas Morning News column:

The book also alleges that Rove held streetcorner meetings withfallen superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, knowing that all visits and phonescalls to the White House were logged. Abramoff recently pleaded guiltyto tax fraud and conspiring to bribe members of Congress.

"When the latest sidewalk strategy session with Karl Rove hadconcluded, Jack Abramoff settled into the backseat of hischauffeur-driven car," Moore and Slater write on page 9. "'Like I said,everything that comes out of the White House is logged in. The phonecalls he makes. The phone calls he receives. So this is just easier.'"

That's my Karl Rove!  Always two steps ahead of the game.  This book appears to be pretty detailed.  Either Rove was bugged, or Abramoff or the driver revealed it all.

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Other sites blogging about Karl Rove: The Moderate Voice, Americablog, Raw Story, Cold Flute, Planet of the Chimps.