Karl Rove--Steadfast even in face of criticism

Graphic by CQ Politics

I found this off The Washington Post:

Rove's brand of politics aims to sharpen differences with the opposition, energize the conservative base and micro-target voters to pick off selected parts of the other side's constituency. As he has in past elections, Rove designed a strategy to paint Democrats as weak on national security and terrorism, the "party of cut and run."

In an expansive interview last week, Rove said that strategy was working until the House page sex scandal involving ex-representative Foley (R-Fla.) put the Republican campaign "back on its heels," as he put it. "We were on a roll, and it stopped it," he said. "It revived all the stuff about Abramoff and added to it."

The various scandals surrounding convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other ethics allegations, Rove said, had as much, if not more, to do with the defeat than the Iraq war. In Rove's analysis, 10 of the 28 House seats Republicans lost were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six, he said, were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the threat. That leaves 12 other seats lost, fewer than the 15 that Democrats needed to capture the House. So without corruption and complacency, he argued, Republicans could have kept control regardless of Bush's troubles and the war.

"It plays some role, but if Iraq is the determining factor and it is a dominant opinion, then in a blue state like Connecticut you should not have 60 percent of the voters vote for one of the candidates who said, 'Stay, fight and win,' " Rove said, referring to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's victory as an independent. "I don't deny that it's a factor, but it is hard to declare" that it is the overriding factor.

The "one-pager" outlines why, in his view, the losses were not particularly extraordinary and therefore not a repudiation of Bush: The loss of 28 House seats and six Senate seats is roughly comparable to losses suffered by the party in the White House in the sixth year of other presidencies and the same as the average wartime midterm. Moreover, it says, 23 races were decided by two percentage points or less, and it credits the "GOP Ground Game," the Rove-devised turnout machine. Overall, a shift of 77,611 votes would have kept the House in Republican hands.

Others point to different statistics -- voters nearly 2 to 1 casting ballots to express opposition to Bush; one in five conservatives voting for Democrats; fewer Hispanics, Catholics and evangelicals supporting Republicans; most voters favoring withdrawal of some or all U.S. troops from Iraq. Some dismiss Rove's historical comparisons as a rationalization for failure, especially since the gerrymandering of House districts has made it harder to oust incumbents than in past midterms.

Rove believes that his original strategy of divisive campaigning and micro-targeting would have maintained Republican control of Congress if the Mark Foley scandal did not surface just before the election. Rove blames the Foley sex scandal, tacked on to both the continuing Abramoff and Tom DeLay scandals, in causing the Republicans to lose control of Congress to the Democrats. Karl Rove does not believe that Iraq was the determining factor for this midterm election.

There is a real problem with this thinking--Karl Rove refuses to believe that it was a combination of the Republican scandals, the Iraq war, and Karl Rove's own strategy of governing through divisive partisanship and continuous campaigning. The Bush administration's entire strategy of governing was to govern from the extreme right, while ignoring both the center and the left. Over time, Karl Rove and the Bush administration alienated the center. Consider this CQ Politics story:

According to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for a combine of broadcast and cable television networks, Democratic candidates were favored by 57 percent of respondents who said they were not affiliated with either major party and who made up 26 percent of voters. The Republicans were favored by 39 percent of independents, which pollsters said was a 9 percentage-point drop for the Republicans from the 2002 elections.

The Democrats dominated among self-described moderates, who made up just less than half of the respondents. The 60 percent to 38 percent Democratic edge among those voters amounted to a 7 percentage-point drop-off for the GOP from 2002. Many of these voters found the Republican message more compelling in 2002 and 2004, especially its emphasis on national security and fighting terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11. The loss of faith in the GOP among many swing voters in the two years since Bush was re-elected — spurred largely by Iraq, Katrina and a series of damaging corruption scandals — contributed to the steep declines in job approval ratings for Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress.

Democrats held big advantages over Republicans, according to exit polling, on most of the big issues that voters said were important to them. On the overriding issue of the war in Iraq, 35 percent of the respondents said the subject was extremely important, and Democrats led among them by 60 percent to 39 percent for the Republicans. On the economy, 39 percent said it was extremely important — and those voters broke 59 percent to 39 percent for the Democrats. And among the 41 percent who said corruption and scandals in government were extremely important, Democrats led 59 percent to 39 percent.

Karl Rove made a huge miscalculation. You can only play divisive politics in campaigning and governing for so long here. The more you isolate the center in governing, the greater the chance of that centrist vote deserting you. And that is what happened with the Republican Party. This was not simply the Mark Foley scandal that caused the Republican Party's losses. This was an accumulation of problems that the Republicans and the Bush administration had brought upon themselves. It wasn't just the corruption. It was the entire system of governing. The Republicans governed for their own extremist base, not for the country as a whole. Look at the Republican "culture of corruption," with Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and the K Street project. Those examples showed the Republican Party using the government to enrich themselves, their political party, and to maintain the Republican dominance in the federal government for decades--if not eternity. The entire Iraq war and the U.S. foreign policy of imperialism was designed and carried out by PNAC neocons. Instead of dealing with Middle America problems of the rising costs of health care, college tuition, the crushing effects of the Alternative Minimum Tax on middle Americans, and even the failure to raise the federal minimum wage, the Republicans concentrated their energies on tax cuts for the rich, subsidizing corporate interests, and debating such important issues as the marriage amendment, flag burning, abortion, limiting federal funding of stem cells, and reinserting the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance for public school reciting. Such important issues were raised to keep their Religious Right constituents happy within the Republican Tent--forget health care or the minimum wage. And even when the Republicans brought the minimum wage increase for debate in Congress, they linked the minimum wage increase with a cut in the estate tax, which was nothing more than an outright pander to the rich elites. The Republican tent had no room for centrists or independents--it was my way or the highway. And finally, the one scandal that really showed the Republican and Bush administration's true colors at ignoring Middle America, has to be the Katrina disaster. When Katrina was pushing up towards New Orleans, President Bush was vacationing in Crawford Texas. On the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, causing the city to be flooded, President Bush was in San Diego strumming a guitar, presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, during a V-J ceremony:

President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz).

This is a president who lives in his own plastic bubble. And sitting next to the president is the entire Republican Party. They ignored the center, ignored the problems of middle class America. President Bush and the Republicans demanded that government intrude in middle class America's lives where they didn't want it--such as gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning--while ignoring middle class America's pleas for government when they needed it with Katrina. All of these disasters accumulated on the Bush administration, forcing both the Presidents and Republican-controlled Congress' job approvals to plummet. These are the lessons that Karl Rove has failed to learn.

You campaign by courting to your base; you govern by courting the center.