Karl Rove is Worse Than We Thought

This morning, Bob Herbert says in his New York Times Op/Ed column,“The White House seems to have slipped the bonds of simple denial and escaped into the disturbing realm of utter delusion.” Herbert then relates the recent handing out of medals to total incompetents and the trumpeting of claims that the economy is just ducky and that the war in Iraq is going great. Just when I was beginning to wonder if the White House was simply inept and not twisted and malevolent, I ran across an article in CounterPunch, “Exposing Karl Rove”, written by Wayne Madsen in 2002 It’s clear. The Karl Rove White House gang are sociopaths and Karl Rove is malicious, mean and will stop at nothing to rule the world. Madsen wrote, “He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.” Madsen went on to say, “Rove's own tendency to be sick-minded originates with his mentor Segretti. The 2000 GOP primary was a chance for Rove to hone his skills in dirty tricks. His target then was Senator John McCain who appeared to be within striking distance of Dubya in South Carolina after the then-GOP maverick's surprise upset victory in New Hampshire. Rove's operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories: McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam "veteran"); McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter); Cindy McCain's drug "abuse"; and even McCain's "homosexuality." In the spirit of Segretti, Rove engineered a victory for Dubya but at the cost of trashing an honorable man and his family. Muskie, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Hart, Tsongas, Clinton, Biden, Dole, Perot, and others had all seen the Segretti/Rove slash and burn tactics before.” Later on in the article, Madsen writes that George W’s take on politics is, “If you're not with me, you're against me.” Madsen says, “Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy. Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism." Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine. However, it was likely that Barr became a target earlier on when he supported Steve Forbes against Bush in the 2000 primary. Bush apparently means to say, "If you've not always been with me, you're against me." It must have really been a dilemma for Bush and Rove to have to come to the support of John Sununu, Jr. in the New Hampshire Senate race. Although Daddy made George W. unceremoniously give the axe to Sununu's father as White House Chief of Staff during the Bush 41 administration, the man who the junior Sununu defeated in the primary, Bob Smith, was even more of a problem. He had the temerity to quit the Republican Party in 2000 and run against Dubya for President. So in Bushspeak, which is obviously borrowed from Forrest Gump's scripts, "if you're less with me than the other guy, you're more against me." Unfortunately, we didn’t take Madsen’s advice in 2002 when he concluded his article by writing, “In all seriousness, rewarding the GOP on November 5 will only increase the appetite of Rove to amass more and more power into the White House. The advent of a Democratic-controlled Senate and House might even begin to spell the end of the road for Segretti's star pupil. German opposition figures in the mid-1930s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a common front when they had a chance. However, they fell prey to the media manipulation of Goebbels and fought among themselves more than they did against the menace from the far right. We Americans also have an early opportunity to stem an out-of-control and anti-constitutional regime with the Rasputin-like Rove at the after steerage helm of our ship of state. That opportunity presents itself next Tuesday--Election Day. “ But it doesn’t make Madsen’s message any less true. That Karl Rove single-handedly controls the White House becomes more evident each day. And the one item that leaps out is this. John McCain has signed a devil’s pact with this crew. Can there be any other explanation for his kissing the asses of the men who sought to destroy his reputation and the reputation of his whole family? I cannot imagine being in the same room with Karl Rove if he had done to my family what he did to the McCain family. And yet, John McCain makes nice with the GOP and smiles and smiles. His ambition to be President surpasses anything anyone can imagine. John McCain obviously has the White House blessing for 2008. If McCain toes the mark, watch for Rove to start destroying other contenders. Is this what the Kerik/Giuliani debacle was all about?