"Rove vs. Reality": Country is off Bush message, and is not coming back

[DeepModem Mom]

WP op-ed: Rove vs. Reality
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006; Page A17

It was in the middle of a question-and-answer session yesterday after a speech defending President Bush's economic record that Karl Rove let drop a phrase that told us everything.

Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, Rove started talking about "game changers," a nice, wonky term to throw around at a leading conservative think tank. The idea is that certain changes in policy can push the political debate in new and -- from the point of view of the game changer -- more congenial directions. The phrase told us everything about what Bush's No. 1 guy had once hoped to accomplish -- and everything about the fix he and the president are now in.

Rove's hope was that at the end of the Bush presidency, he and his boss would have so changed the rules of the policy and political game that all the pressures would be for lower taxes, less domestic spending, more market-friendly approaches to health care, and private accounts within Social Security.

There has indeed been a lot of game-changing going on, but Rove's remarks served to underscore that the game has, from his point of view, been changing in exactly the wrong way. At certain moments, he almost admitted as much....

***

Rove joked about being way "off message" in talking about the economy just hours before his president was to address the nation on immigration....The problem is not that Rove was off message but that the country has gone off Bush's message, and shows no sign of coming back. Everything Rove said yesterday shows that the smartest man at Bush's side knows it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501201.html?nav=hcmodule

[AX10]

1. Democrats can win in November.

[paparush]

2. REALITY has been a BIG challenge for this *cough* administration.. nt

[Kagemusha]

3. What's with the flood of "Rove's tripping" MSM material today?...

This is unusual to say the least. They're not usually fast or furious to call him full of BS, to understate the matter.

Do they see him as weak in spite of the bravado?

[Orsino]

4. Of course it's coming back...

...just as soon as the corporate media can herd us there. This took, what, ten years after Reaganomics? That was before the '96 Telecommunications Act, so I presume that the next swing of the pendulum will come even more quickly.

In a collapsing economy, Americans will fall for any message which promises to heap the blame on someone else. You think welfare queens, the homosexual agenda and the War on Terr were bad? We haven't been poor and hungry in a loooooong time, and have forgotten just what we're capable of doing.

[cliss]

5. Yes, I'm sure reality has finally

wiped that smug smile off his face. I loved the part yesterday, where Rove said he was "sanguine" about everybody loving Bush, after all.


Reality, meet Karl Rove.

[saltpoint]

6. Rove remains the Company Man, the loyalist, and has kind words

for the man who may be asked to pardon him.