The Trimmings of Slim Victory

Probably the strangest thing about the spectacle of Karl Rove as pundit is that Newsweek has ostensibly taken him on board in order to share his immense wisdom about American political campaigning -- but the most immediate reason he's available for a pundit gig in the first place is that he botched the 2006 elections.

If Rove had gotten that permanent Republican majority that we heard so much about in the earlier years of this wretched new American century, would he be writing Newsweek columns and online WSJ editorials? I kind of doubt it, myself. He'd be kickin' it Ming the Merciless style, lolling about on a throne of infant skulls while being constantly masturbated by high-tech NASA stroke-bots, granting audiences to party potentates, lickspittles, and courtiers, each seeking desperately to curry his favor or indulge his whims. I'm sure the Fox News green room is nice and all, but it's not like that.

If I were a Movement Conservative contemplating the grim GOP prospects this election season, the guy I'd be the most annoyed at is Rove, frankly. If I truly believed that "conservative ideas" are still wonderfully popular but have been betrayed by the not-really-conservative administration, well, who was the "architect" of that? Wasn't Rove supposed to be in charge of building the GOP "brand," making it so damn attractive that the Democrats would be stomped out of government maybe forever?

Yes, he was, and he whizzed it. He deliberately pursued an electoral strategy of trying to motivate the GOP base and eke out narrow victories, and this left little to no time for actually selling those yummy-delicious "conservative ideas" to anyone in the center. And the base ate it up, only to realize now that they've been had -- it's like some Christian alt-rock band got fast-talked by some slick promoter into booking a gig at Giants Stadium only to find out to their dismay that nobody's buying tickets. Just because everyone bops to the music at your live shows at the megachurch auditorium, that doesn't mean the rest of the country doesn't think you suck.

Of course, I don't suppose the lesson of all this will be grasped by the wingnut mind. The thing is, "conservative ideas" do, in fact, suck. This is why attempts on the part of our favorite commentators to explain just what went wrong are so hilarious. No, it was not immigration that sunk you; neither is it earmarks, nor can we blame inadequate federalism. The problem is that modern conservatism is hardly a "philosophy," no matter how badly its adherents want to pretend that it is.  No, it's a preposterous form of identity politics and utterly inadequate when it comes to issues of, you know, governing a country.

Comments

[Jay B.]

the legislative 'heft' behind the conservative ideology always hid behind deception.

Clean Air (a gift to the coal industry)
Save on Children from Online Predators (written by online predators)
Homeland Security (minimum-wage idiots, Constitution shredding and domestic spying)
Healthy Forests (a gift to the lumber industry)
Pretty Ponies for Everyone (Tax Breaks for the Ultra-Rich).

They could never really sell the product they had without resorting to literally pretending it was the opposite. I'm in advertising and while we can distort, spin and fudge even WE can do that.

If we had a functioning media, this halfassed NewSpeak might have been exposed before it could have done its damage.

But at long last — mainly because of the staggering hypocrisy these idiots engage in on a daily basis -- most Americans have seen the con of conservatism.

Today, it's called the Secret Family for Me and Not Thee Party, yesterday it was the Wide Stance Party, the IM Fandango Party, tomorrow it will be the I Sacrificed the Country Club in Country Club Republicanism for our Fighting Boys and Girls.

Empty to the core. Cynical to the last. Hated by all.

[Jay B.]

More Awesome Republican Ideas, from the Washington Post:

DeLay and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) have been issuing calls to arms to their former troops. But even they disagree on the steps needed to reverse their fortunes, with Gingrich demanding an emergency meeting of all Republicans to craft a new agenda. Gingrich is offering unusual proposals such as reforming the Census Bureau and the Federal Aviation Administration.

But DeLay called those ideas "a yawn" and instead demanded a dramatic agenda that would energize the conservative base -- or else face major losses in the fall leading to wholesale changes in leadership next year.

Civil Service reform of two obscure agencies -- or a return to real crazy shit.

It's the Change They Deserve!

[K. Ron Silkwood]

Yes. Caligula and Jeffrey Dahmer had better core principles.

[Jemand von Niemand]

There's something more than just the limits of power and human nature at work with Rove.

Fat Karl's mentor was Lee Atwater, a vicious, classic schoolyard bully; Rove was the geeky high school kid, the A-V Club president who was always getting beaten up by people like Atwater. The 1972 CBS news clip of Rove, still a kid, working to organize the college version of 'ratfucking for Nixon' (see it here, at 4:00 into the clip) shows it clearly.

But, Atwater wasn't all that bright. What Rove went on to do -- fix elections; politicize major institutions of the government, and manipulate them to obtain that magic "51%" he claimed was all that was necessary to create fifty years of one-party domination... Atwater could never have dreamed up or organized a job like that.

Rove is a nihilist, about America, and our politics -- he doesn't give a fuck about the Constitution, or the legally mandated, non-partisan nature of the government bureaucracy: The system, the People are there to be manipulated.

Only, Fat Karl The Architect designed and built a substandard structure. In the earthquake that's coming in American politics, he's in danger of being buried alive when it all comes crashing down.

Maybe he'll go to prison; probably not. But he's a waddling pariah among Republicans -- and so it's important for Karl to be a pundit, now; to seem as if he still has relevance.

[DrDick]

"conservative ideas" do, in fact, suck

I don't really think that they actually qualify as functioning "ideas", but more as vague glimmerings, indeterminate impulses, or unfocused urges. Conservatism at its heart is not a philosophy, unless you can call "I've got mine, fuck you" a philosophy. It is a concerted effort to establish and maintain oligarchic control by economic elites with small sops thrown to their lickspittle allies among the great unwashed.

[madamab]

KKKarl Rove, political genius! That always makes me howl. How's that "Math" workin' for ya, KKKarl ol' sock?

Great post.

[Jay B.]

Rove is a nihilist, about America, and our politics -- he doesn't give a fuck about the Constitution, or the legally mandated, non-partisan nature of the government bureaucracy: The system, the People are there to be manipulated.

That's a great observation Jemand and one that I've seen first hand is spot on.

When I was a student jounalist, I used to know David Beckwith a little -- he and Bill Kristol were Danny Qualye's hydra-headed henchmen -- while he was running Kay Baliey Hutchinson's Senate campaign in 1994.

Beckwith was an ex-radical from the 60's who traded one form of contempt for another. It wasn't quite ideological in the way Kristol was ideological -- it was nihilistic.

Talking with him was fun -- nihilism can be funny in conversation, shocking, bracing -- but he was just another viper who hated the basic institutions of democracy. And I never forgot that, especially as he and I watched the Republican Revolution take over in 1994 from a ballroom in Dallas.

[Righteous Bubba]

I am distressed that the comments to this post ignore the paradigm-changing potential of high-tech NASA stroke-bots.

[Amused Observer]

"No, it's a preposterous form of identity politics and utterly inadequate when it comes to issues of, you know, governing a country."

So...are we saying that identity politics are bad?

[Jay B.]

Yeah, when they are preposterous or do you really not understand adjectives and context?

[aimai]

I don't think Rove was booted because of loosing the 2006 election, he was booted because he was too close to the Oval office and also too close to being deposed and convicted in a variety of criminal and near criminal trials. I doubt ifbush would ever have defenestrated him otherwise. Still, other than that, I agree with everything else in the post.

aimai

[Thers]

So...are we saying that identity politics are bad?

"Politics" is singular.

[Thers]

I don't think Rove was booted because of loosing the 2006 election, he was booted because he was too close to the Oval office and also too close to being deposed and convicted in a variety of criminal and near criminal trials.

I don't disagree, though I think if 2006 had gone differently he would have stuck it out. But of course there asn't really a distinction here; the scandals etc. are a large part of why the 2006 didn't go to the GOP. Both are expressions of the same basic ideological & political nihilism.

[Amused Observer]

Aimie,
How polite of you to attempt to correct my grammar. Your correction, while I trust is well meaning is not entirely correct, but polite none the less. Such interest in the proper use of the English language is commendable. Do you have the same high regard for intellectual honesty that you do for grammar? Have you an opinion on the concept of the tactic of identity politics?

Just a cut and paste, but still an observation, an amusing observation.

In its other senses, as when it refers to the activities or methods of a politician or a government, politics can take either a singular or plural verb: When politics means “political attitudes and positions,” it usually gets a plural verb: Her politics have not always been so radical.
The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[Thers]

AO, please, keep posting.

First, you misspelled "aimai." Second, you were responding to my post, not aimai's. Third, you don't understand your own cut n' paste. Fourth, you're a twat. Fifth, you misread my post, as Jay B pointed out. Sixth, when you can't even concede you're guilty of an obvious solecism, you have some stones babbling about "intellectual honesty." Seventh, I reiterate, you're a twat, and out of your depths.

[Amused Observer]

Oh My Thers,
You have such a wickedly sharp sense about you. I am absolutely withered by your devastating retort. Perhaps I can find some solace in the fact that you're mistaken on several accounts, again. Your grasp of the finer points of the correct use of the English language is not as firm as you think.

Do I detect a whiff of misogyny in your repeated vulgarities? Self loathing perhaps, a wee bit of gender confusion without a doubt. Speaking of out of one’s depth, I notice you never address a question but always fall back on the name calling that is so common in Jr. High school but is discarded by adults in intelligent conversation.

Have you an opinion, positive or negative, on the subject of identity politics?

[Thers]

There's really not much of a question here; you're wrong as a simple matter of fact.

You want to discuss "intellectual honesty," and you can't concede you're wrong about a fairly trivial point of prescriptive grammar.

Give it up, man. And like you ever talk to adults. Please, son.

[MelodyMaker]

mmhmm. twat. I, for one, applaud the use of "twat" returning to honest discourse. Eat it sweetie. :) I'm also in favor of using "Sugar Tits" in certain circumstances. Wait... no. maybe.

[MelodyMaker]

Both are expressions of the same basic ideological & political nihilism.

Vee believe in nussing! We take your money.. No. Fuck you. What's mine is mine. But his gierlfriend gave up her toe! I've got 42 dollars, Walter. No Donnie, these people are cowards.
Crybabies!

[Amused Observer]

Oh Mommy,
It's so exciting to sit at the big table with the grownups. But such language, it adds so much prestige and authority, such gravitas to your witty rejoinder.

You need to take a bit closer examination of the finer points of grammar. But I digress, is your mistaken command of the rules of English really the subject at hand? I thought the painting of Republicans with the brush of identity politics quite amusing coming from a liberal feminist. Relations seem a bit strained between members of the coalition of affirmative action of the Democratic Party. White guilt and the enthusiasm of youth seem to have race trump gender in the identity sweepstakes. I don’t believe I can ever remember such virulent misogyny as the unveiled contempt shown Hilary by members of the self labeled progressive movement. Can’t say as I remember anyone calling her a twat though.

Identity politics is a system for capturing the votes of a coalition incapable or afraid of trying to succeed by the merits of individual achievement.

[Thers]

It's pretty great having a person objectively wrong presenting their subjective opinion.

Continue.

[aw]

I don’t believe I can ever remember such virulent misogyny as the unveiled contempt shown Hilary by members of the self labeled progressive movement.

Erm... what?

She's faced plenty of misogynistic crap lately, but as for "worst I've ever seen"... you live a sheltered life.

[aw]

White guilt and the enthusiasm of youth

Okay, so now anyone who votes for a black guy is a victim of "white guilt". I guess we'll have to vote for white people only from now on, lest we fall victim to your piercing insight.

You need to take a bit closer examination of the finer points of grammar.

So do you. The two-word adverb "a bit" can only modify an adjective if it is predicative. Hope this helps!

[spinoza]

I am so glad someone showed up with their Fowler and Fowler to shine the flashlight on this drunken Irish lout.

[ronjazz]

Too bad aw has more invested in spinning grammar than in developing a defense of the corrupt rightwing regime. I guess "look over there" defense is all that's left to such intellectual lightweaights.

[Davis]

On some occasions "politics" can take a plural verb, such as "Republican politics suck" However, "identity politics are bad" is not one of those occasions. It is referring to a specific element of politics.

Also, you don't know about comma placement, don't know the difference between "between" and "among", and don't know the meaning of "coalition".

That is all.

[aw]

I really hope you're not confusing me with "Abused Observer". Because that would be horrid.

[theperilouspea]

Conservative clutch
a) Newly hatched schemes to place others into harms way
b) The vaporpüs hanky which dramatically intervenes to save the fainting heart from theories of gravity
c) etc

[aw]

I hope you aren't confusing me with Abused Observer. Because that would be horrid.

[aw]

Sorry, TypePad tricked me.