Blue Texan is not alone in wondering about this:
Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.
Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.
In effect, Rove was rebutting the complaint inside the party that George W. Bush is responsible for Republican miseries by invading Iraq.
As BT notes, this is not especially convincing. Indeed, it's gibberish: the GOP is the "culture of Washington." And Iraq will be the 2008 issue: everyone knows that. So what's up? I've never thought Rove was quite the Wizard he was made out to be. His entire success, such as it is, is due to the fact that he is a total asshole who is willing to act like a total asshole. Period. But he's not stupid ... indeed, it was rather a clever insight that you could get quite far by acting like an absolute asshole. Too bad about the unforeseen "having to actually govern" difficulty, but still. Well done, man. ... So I'm going to go with, "here, Rove is being a total asshole, and not stupid." I don't think he expected any of these "insiders"to actually believe him about this "2008 will not be about the war" nonsense. No. What he wanted them to do was not give an inch to the Democratic Congress. Why? Because the motherfucker has just been subpoenaed -- which everyone knew was coming. What was he saying? About "corruption"? He was saying, "I know where all the corruption is, and there's a lot of it, and if you value your phony-baloney jobs you will help us stonewall the Democratic Congress for the next year and a half." Tell me I'm wrong.