Where did Rove's "genius" go?

[Writer]

Frankly I never thought it existed. His wins are more closely associated with manipulating the vulnerable (post 9/11 - all of us; in 2004 - the most religious of us).

Yet it *ain't* going so well for him, now, is it? Honestly I think the man resorts to low-ball tactics because he can't win at politics traditionally. He bends the rules because he doesn't possess any real political skill. It's all a mirage.

So here's my observation - the recent political events are not only exposing Bush, the puppet, for being a fraud, but also Rove, the puppet-master.

What have we been so afraid about these last few years, anyway?

[knowbody0]

1. Cajun JuJu

[ComerPerro]

2. They are setting up the sense of "victimhood" among conservatives

"Our leaders are under attack by the evil liberals (who control everything)."

Nothing rallies the fundies like a good old persecution complex.

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

5. They'll be spinning like tops all the way to jail or further

You can't keep dodging the icebergs forever.

Titanic, meet iceberg!

[underpants]

6. We shall rise above

Keep the faith

[ginnyinWI]

3. Rove can only do so much

And now there are too many facts on the ground to spin. Nothing fails like failure!

[ourbluenation]

4. pissed away with his kidney stones...

and flushed down the toidy

[rniel]

7. You watch somewhere there is probably a guy right now

thinking this is all going exactly as Karl Rove planned.

[npincus]

8. the curtain has really been pulled back on the Wizard

[Wildewolfe]

11. What we've been afraid of...

.. these past years, is the sheer amount of damage these asshats can do on their way out.

The Patriot Act
The Patriot Act mark 2
The bankruptcy bill

the list goes on and on....

They will hoist themselves on their own petard, but it will take us years and years to correct the damage they did getting there.

[CTD]

9. It's more been an issue of the media being terrified of Rove

Plenty of things have happened that *should* have had a major impact (IMO, some should have already brought about the downfall of the Chimp) but the media has been too terrified of Rove to report them adequately.

Threaten to take away their contacts and they panic. A reporter without a contact is pretty useless. So Rove was smart to use that as leverage.

Now with things starting to fall apart, Rove isn't able to maintain that level of discipline within the WH. People will talk to reporters even if Rove tells them not to. So the leverage is dissapating somewhat.

What I fear is that Rove will crack down on the WH staff, disposing of those not 100% loyal, and things will go back to what they were. Of course, the reason the WH and all of the agencies are filled with cronies rather than qualified staff is because of this insistence on placing 100% Bush loyal staff.

[underpants]

10. Never existed-the press's "uprising" is all it took

Yes that teeny tiny little bit of not spewing the party line was all it took. I give Howard Dean (no Deaniac me) most of the credit for getting the ball rolling and being the first guy to stand up on a national scale and call their bullshit.

What we have seen over the last few weeks is the press (lots of blood on those hands) not really "Striking back" but simply not acting as their megaphone. Oh, the people wanted to hear it too.

[Lexingtonian]

12. He's always been about

whipping up the resentments of uneducated (though often schooled) white people.
At some point he was going to run out of resentments to play.

Stupid people are inherently scary when they hold power. They break everything that isn't made of stone (not always a bad thing) in the process. Don't do that revisionism.

If you follow polling, Republican support maxed out the day after '9/11' at 92% and has been bleeding away at a net constant rate of ~1%- a bit over a million voters- a month.
And despite all their games, Rove and the like have never been able to change that basic fact. For all the apparent triumph, the political glue and relevance of the Nixon/Reagan GOP has aged and broken. That Party is obsolete and disintegrating.