Karl Rove Is a Genius

2006-01-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

Karl Rove is a genius. An evil genius, I’ll grant you, but a genius none then less. He has won and because he won, he makes the rules. Now that Bush and Co. are in trouble, Democrats can beat them at their own game ONLY if they play by Rove’s rules.
The rules are:
1. Attack your opponent’s strengths and the weaknesses will take care of themselves.
2. Keep the message bumper sticker simple and black and white, not nuanced.
3. Stay on a unified message. Everyone in the party must use the same play book and the same phrases, otherwise they won’t get money from the national party organization. Be a team player or get out.
4. Always attack. Be proactive, not reactive and don’t let your opponent control the debate.
5. Politics ain’t beanbag, it’s Thunderdome.
If the’ 06 campaign was just about the issues, Dems would win without lifting a finger. Face it, issues don’t matter, it’s all about the message. I read Joe Conason’s column in Salon on the coming Swift Boat attack in May of 04, three months before the punch was delivered. I expected Kerry to be ready with a brilliant aggressive counterattack. I got squat. On the morning after the ‘04 election when Kerry conceded before recounting Ohio, I went out and pulled his name off the bumper of my car in disgust. How could we fail to beat the worst president in history? I put more money into Kerry’s campaign than in all other elections combined. Never again will I give money to the DNC until they understand and play by Rove’s rules of the game.
In every poll I’ve seen, the only place that Bush gets a majority approval rating is national security. That’s the target, people and we can hit it from at least a dozen different directions:
1. Are we safer when the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have mismanaged the federal budget so badly that we must rely on the Communist Chinese and the Saudi Royal family to buy Treasury bills to pay our nation's debt? Depending on regimes that back terrorism and tyranny for our country's solvency is suicidal. Either nation could cause a great depression in this country just by cashing in their T-bills. And where will the money come from to pay the Saudis and Chinese when they pull out? Your social security. Reversing the tax cuts for the wealthy and deadbeat corporations and balancing the budget is a matter of national security.
2. Are we safer depending on unstable Mideast nations that finance terrorism for our energy needs? Developing a domestic renewable energy strategy is essential for our national security and much less costly than Oil Wars.
3. Are we safer because our tax code and trade policies encourage big business to export our manufacturing base and middle class jobs to the third world? Creating trade policies that keep middle class manufacturing jobs and infrastructure in this country is a matter of national security.
4. Are you safer relying on your employer for health care when your employer must compete with businesses in countries where their governments provide health care? Providing national health care will keep our citizens more secure and our businesses more competitive and therefore, it is a matter of national security.
5. Are you safer because the government can tap your phone without a warrant or frisk your grandmother at the airport? Ben Franklin, the man who’s face appears on the hundred dollar bill said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” If we abandon the fourth amendment of our own constitution, the terrorists have already won.
6. Are you safer because big business lobbyists, not your elected representatives write legislation that spends the people’s money? A congressman spends 70% of his time fund raising, therefore the job of crafting legislation falls to the lobbyists who supply them that money. Public financing of congressional campaigns is much cheaper than paying top price for Medicare prescription drugs, pork barrel Pentagon projects and corporate welfare kickbacks. The purpose of government should be to provide its citizens protection from predatory capitalism, not to make corporate profits fatter on the backs of taxpayers. Many of these corporations pay nothing in federal income taxes, which makes us borrow more from China and the Saudis.
7. What about your personal security? If you get a vaccine that makes you sick, you can no longer sue the drug company thanks to legislation written by the drug industry and passed by Republicans. Who’s safer, you or the drug industry? Suppose you get so sick that you loose your job and then your health insurance. Thanks to new bankruptcy legislation written by the banking industry and passed by Republicans, you will loose your house too. Tell me again how you are safer with Republicans?
8. Are you safer when a few private corporations control the counting of your votes? Communist dictator Josef Stalin said, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those that count the votes decide everything.” The nonpartisan General Accounting Office has determined our current voting system is not secure. The bill HR 550 will fix it, but Republicans are blocking it from coming to a vote. Securing our voting system is a matter of national security.
9. Are we safer after Bush decided to invade Iraq on false intelligence without an exit strategy? The War in Iraq has cost about $240 billion, much of it financed by borrowing from the Chinese and Saudis while the rich get tax cuts. That’s a million dollars every six minutes. The results are as follows: over 2000 US forces dead, 50,000 wounded or disabled and over 100,000 dead Iraqis. The Iraq government we fought to create advocates an Islamic theocracy more friendly to Iran than us, in which 82% of Iraqi citizens “strongly oppose” our presence there and over 40% believe killing Americans is justified. Our military is tapped out and incapable of handling another major conflict, so why do you believe that Republicans make you safer?
10. Were the residents of the Gulf coast safer with most of the men and materials of their National Guard units based in Iraq during Hurricane Katrina? National security begins at home.
11. Are we any safer from terrorism? In 44 months, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt lead this nation out of Pearl Harbor to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese, with the philosophy that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” After 52 months since 9/11, Bin Ladin is still at large, we have angered most of the Arab world, produced more terrorism and find ourselves in the middle of a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, while the Bush administration depends on the fear of terrorism to keep Republicans in office. Are Republicans really better than Democrats at national security?
12. Are you safer when congress abdicates it’s constitutional responsibility for executive oversight? Congress has put party loyalty above constitutional responsibility as it constantly refuses to examine bona fide questions on prewar intelligence, surveillance without warrants, war profiteering, torture of prisoners, corruption and cronyism. Giving the President unchecked power is a threat to national security and the constitution.
Forget about Alito, forget about abortion, forget about racism, forget how they distort the record, forget about media bias, forget the whining about how we have no power. HIT THEM WHERE IT HURTS: NATIONAL SECURITY. Kick them in the nuts every chance we get. Keep kicking them in the same place over and over and over again and don’t stop. And while Rove is a genius, Bush is such a fool that he revealed the key to victory: “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” Then one month before the election, reveal a unified plan for fixing the above like the "contract with America" in '94. Don't give them months to pick it apart; make them reactive in the last month and make sure all correspondence is encrypted. ‘06 is our last chance to get it right. If we don’t, the new world order will have us all by the nuts.

-Paul W.

Karl Rove Is A Genius

Karl Rove Is a Genius