I wanna hear Scully's take on this.

What about the Do Not Call legislation?

Shouldn't Rove get credit for Bush's only achievement?

Why are they always lying? Why can't they tell the truth?

Our side doesn't have to lie about providing education or health care ... arg.

As long as the little guy isn't gay, or black, or poor, or hispanic, or an immigrant, or not a guy...

They lie because that is what they do, or more broadly, that is what they are. Wolves kill to eat, mosquitoes suck blood, and Republicans lie to conceal what they are up to. Telling them to stop it is like telling them to deny their basic identity.

Gerson's piece is a tour de force of high comedy. This classic satire belongs on the desks of every aspiring writer on the Comedy Centeral

Didn't Rove also invent the internets?

Like I always say, you have to go back 150 years to find the last time the Republican party helped black people.

Feel good stuff? That's the type of stuff that comes from the gut -- not your book reading. One must go beyond the facts, forget the facts, or lose their mind altogether, in the grand tradition of Nixon, Harding, Grant, and Reagan.

I was waiting for the 'just kidding' at the end.

Karl Rove, a fighter for the little guy. It just makes the stomach churn.

Like I always say, you have to go back 150 years to find the last time the Republican party helped black people.

Try the more recent Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s.

Try the more recent Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s.

From Wikipedia, the party line vote for Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The original House version:

Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)
The Senate version:

Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%) (only Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) (this was Senator John Tower of Texas)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) (only Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia opposed the measure)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) (Senators Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and Norris H. Cotton of New Hampshire opposed the measure)

Interesting history. Perhaps all the Southern Democrats who voted against the bill are all now dead or are Republicans.

Didn't a Bush-appointed committee propose getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction a couple of years ago?

Every moment that Rove is not being waterboarded is an instant of justice denied. Or postponed.

Still waiting for harry to add "Just kidding!" to his post.

((Perhaps all the Southern Democrats who voted against the bill are all now dead or are Republicans.))

Quite a few of them, yes.

Interesting figures, gregor. And while harry's right in that northern Republicans did the right thing and lent the support that led to passage... it was the Dems who were gutsiest (a gutsiness almost unimaginable from them today) - they had the whole South and their majority coalition to lose (94 of 104 seats in Congress and 21 or 22 seats in the Senate)and this they chose. As wiki says Legend has it that, as he put down his pen, Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation." For Republicans take truly share of credit for this, they would also to have shared in the opprobrium. Only now forty years past, is a new majority coalition in sight for the Dems and the southern gift the Republicans gained has become their anchor. They may be fleeting, but sometimes there are moments of justice. May we also be able to say the same of Karl Rove some day.

Cynical, Machiavellian Republican hacks will often speak well of other cynical, Machiavellian Republican hacks.

Scooter Libby and Ted Stevens are fairly short. Don't they qualify as little guys?

Don't they qualify as little guys?

And if you're talking moral stature, then hell, high-fiving yeah, Karl's your guy.

Breaking news (OT): Jenna Bush, 25, is marrying Henry Hager, 28, a former White House aide who used to work with Karl Rove.

His father, John Hager, is the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party.

-- In Virginia, a horse's blood lines mean everything. What the GOP won't do with stem cells they do with sperm cells.

"This is Rove's model for the Republican Party's great activist tradition of helping the little guy? "

Well, actually it is Rove's model for Republican party activist tradion of helping the little guy, but only as a simile or metaphor. It's called: "The Big Lie"

(See: compassionate conservative, reformer with results, uniter not divider, Saddam has WMV, clear skies initiative, the United States does not do torture, and so on and so forth...)

As long as the little guy isn't gay, or black, or poor, or hispanic, or an immigrant, or not a guy...

URK, you are mistaken. It's, very simply, "As long as 'the little guy' isn't little. They don't actually care about you if you're a guy, either.

They don't care about anyone who isn't rich.

This is not just a lie. This is a lie of such magnitude and scope that it simply amazes a person. It is not based on any single thing, except other press released.

Following this enormous pile of shit masquerading as a column, there are at this time 19 pages of comments, which all call Gerson an absolute moron.

Gerson, Goebbels - one Nazi calling to another.

Where's Al? This SHIT pumped out by Gerson apparently has nauseated even a scumtoad like Al.

But, But activist reformers?

Karl Rove is all about the lie. Unbid contracts, smear campaigns, threatened to fire the chief actuary of Medicare, Richard S. Foster - I can see that Rove will helpping Repugs for long, long time.

Repugs can get rid of Rove, but the Repugs can't get rid of the stench he left behind.

Anything that starts with "his background in direct mail" and continues with "helping the little guy.." .... oh please.

I also loved the line that he would be universally loved if not for "the complications of Iraq".

Yes, all those dead bodies, it does dreadfully ....complicate things, doesn't it? A deuced annoyance, politically, shame about that.

The notion, moreover, stated often by Rove also, that this is all that's gone wrong amongst this administration's otherwise stellar acoomplishments-- ---delusional is too mild a word.

Doesn't it sort of depend on what Rove means by "little guy?" The term usually alludes to someone who is powerless,humble, ordinary, that is, a "regular joe," not a "fat cat," not a "mover & shaker," not a "mucky-mucky" or "pooh-bah.".

Rove's Republican party was forged by a conservative minority that believes they were forced by the wicked liberal majority to accept policies and behaviors which are not in their interests. They have this aggrieved sense of being put-upon & treated unfairly.

So if you take that lens--that is, poor little Texas conservatives (eg, Ken Lay, GWB, the Wyly brothers, etc.) who have been cruelly exploited by the powerful northern liberals--then yes, the modern Republican party represents "little guys."

Of course, that doesn't explain why Karl Rove claims the mortgage interest deduction & 401K as Republican achievements. That confusion probably has to be chalked up to the usual four horsemen of the Republican apocalyse: Incompetence, Greed, Ignorance, and Viciousness.

"The Little Guys" = CEOs of even small multibillion dollar corporations . . .

This shallow, juvenile sniping is an example of "tearing a piece apart"?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/17/rove-champion-of-the-little-guy/

Gerson's essay steals a page from the book, "What's The Matter With Kansas?"

Rove (and Gerson, and the entire GOP) promote the notion that, while being poor may be your unfortunate lot in life, there is still a lot of satisfaction to be gained by getting very angry about all those evil, liberal issues -- family planning, gun control, evolution, lax immigration controls, the Clintons, etc. etc.

It's like the GOP is a political micro-loan consolidater. They take all these "little guy" culture war issues, bundle them together, and fire people up to invest their nights and weekends in unseating the local school board.

Meanwhile, the suits back in Washington are planning the next war, extending troops' tours of duty, eliminating the inheritance tax, violating privacy laws, politicizing the justice system, etc. etc.

Does anyone else think that Rove's sudden departure, allegedly on his own terms, was the payoff for the Dems agreement to not pursue impeachment proceedings against various administration officials?

BUT, BUT, BUT...Rove's biggest talent was getting our dear leader to READ - by contesting with him who could complete more books...so we are to believe that this man who needs to practice, practice, practice to deliver the words put into his mouth, and who goes to bed at 9PM actually read a book every two weeks... HOW MANY WERE CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS???

Shorter Karl Rove: "The HOMOS are coming!"

Why talk to Rove at all? All you're going to get from these people is lying twaddle designed to cloud the issues and make you go away, like Bush talking and talking at press conferences just to waste time and run out the clock.

Before this era of foul Republican extremism, it could be argued that meeting, debating, arguing were all good things. But the subtlest, most thoughtful and analytical thing that can come out of a Republican's mouth these days is his pointing at you and yelling, "Yer goin' to HAY-ELL!"

And Rove's self-justifications and self-lies aren't much better. Talking and talking with zero understanding. Like that writer feller from Texas says, Rove really is pathological.

POedLib: This is not just a lie. This is a lie of such magnitude and scope that it simply amazes a person. It is not based on any single thing, except other press released.

Following this enormous pile of shit masquerading as a column, there are at this time 19 pages of comments, which all call Gerson an absolute moron.

Now up to 29 pages of people all making that observation.

So rather than pile on verbally, I'll just share this for y'all's amusement.

[Wingnut warning!]

Ah, Kevin.

Heh. Y'all just don't get it do you.

First of all the Bush administration doesn't condescend to anyone by labeling them a "little guy", as you North east liberal elites do. Just like REpublicans believe you should become colorblind when it comes to rascim, not reverse discrimination.

Here are the the reformist policies of the Bush adminstration that helped all guys (and by extension, the "little" ones, as you condescendingly put it): NLCB, 2001 / 2003 tax cuts, elimination of the estate tax (I should be able to determine who I give my hard money to when I die), loads of bilateral free trade agreements (lowering costs to consumers), Iraq (spreading a shot of democracy to all those "little guys" [or don't they count because their brown?]), medicare drug benefit, attempts at private savings accounts, medical savings accounts, capital gains and dividend tax cuts, keeping the feds from heavy handed interference in Katrina, and on and on...

Yeah, but Rove only cares about the elites. Heh, that assertion is so patentedly bald on its face that you'd be laughed out of regular message boards.

That is why the GOP gets so much of their donations from little guys and practically nothing from wealthy corporations and sugar daddies. LOL

GOP=little guy does not pass the smell test.

Shorter Gerson:

"Shit don't stink"

Newt Gingrich was right. The civil rights bills were passed by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

It was also supported by the liberal wing of the Republican Party.

It was rejected by the conservatives.

Party affiliations change, the ideologies remain the same.

-GSD

Rove showed his "love" for the average Joe when he said he didn't want his son to grow up to be manual laborer.

401(k) plans are not some wonderful panacea. They're simply a generic version of "defined contribution" pension plans. They were invented by industry like Big Steel and the automakers to cheat the labor unions. Formerly, workers had "defined benefit" plans, where once the pension rights vested, the retiree was guaranteed a certain level of benefits for life. The portfolio risk was borne by the company. With defined contribution plans, including 401(k), the portfolio risk is borne by the individual. If you retire when the stock market is tanking, you're screwed.

I like this review better:

http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=824

Rove Had ‘Tactical Brilliance, Strategic Blindness’

by Patrick J. Buchanan

If one had to sum up the legacy of Karl Rove as political adviser to the 43rd president, it could probably be done in four words: tactical brilliance, strategic blindness....

I was going to write something nice about Michael Gerson, such as, he should stick to what he does best; i.e., teach killer apes how to speak.
Before I could, I saw egbert's post. I finally realized there could be only three explanations for his statements.
He is a great political satirist in the mold of Jonathan Swift and Ann Coulter.
He is the Lex Luthor of doublethink.
He is d*mb*r than a box of rocks.
Karl Rove had one talent; winning elections. Now that he can no longer do that it is time for him to be put out to pasture.

KARL ROVE, CHAMPION OF THE LITTLE GUY.

Well I got this email multiple times this morning

Don't be the "little guy" in the club

Maybe that's what he means? Though I don't quite undersand what 401(k)s have to do with this...

Smegbert,

Really. Better Trolling, Please.

At least in Iraq there's a lot of shots being spread around. To the tune of over 4000 coalition lives, at last count, I believe.

Wait...I think a Republican invented call-waiting and those twisty lines at the airport.

Another day; another big lie. Gerson is just a modern-day Goebbels who goes to church.

"keeping the feds from heavy handed interference in Katrina"

I know I'm feeding it, but this line actually made me spit coffee on my computer. Good show, Egbert!!

insane. karl rove, a 'reformer' in the model of lincoln. how deformed does the frontal lobe of your brain have to be in order to pen such garbage?

karl rove's main innovation was making an entire presidential election about gays getting married, a military hero's lack of heroism, and fear that the bible was going to be "banned" even though he: 1) was at the center of a scandal involving a male prostitute staying overnight at the white house dozens of times, 2) has never done anything even remotely close to serving in the military and 3) is an atheist. impressive in terms of the sheer hypocrisy, yes. lincoln-esque in, um....uh, yeah...in no way at all. what so ever.

history will remember him as the epicenter of a national epidemic of hatred and stupidity.

"keeping the feds from heavy handed interference in Katrina"

I know I'm feeding it, but this line actually made me spit coffee on my computer. Good show, Egbert!!

I know; that really was brilliant.

Wouldn't it be something if Rove had actually used Theodore Roosevelt as a model for Bush ...

Maybe every time Bush called Rove "TurdBlossom", Rove called Bush "Little Guy."

Yeah. I was going to say that I thought that was one of the best Egbert posts ever.

Karl is indeed an activist reformer, bringing the Republican party a new strategic vision, helping it to abandon that hide-bound belief in 'good governance' and 'civic responsibility'. It's not being a 'cynical political operator', oh no. It's just that his profound strategy of reform requires conversion of the offices of the government to enable a permanent Republican majority, to empower the 'little guy'. The little ($25,000) Republican donor guy.

Karl Rove reminds me of the guy who was beating the shit out of a dog, all the while saying, "This is good for you, and I'm sure you're enjoying it every minute." If some by-stander were to say, "You are beating the shit out of that dog," the Repukeliscum response is always "Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Kevin: It looks as if you could have just ended the piece with that observation that Gerson WAS formerly a Bush speech writer. (Once a NeoConNazi propagandist, ALWAYS a NeoConNazi propagandist, it would seem -- by volition or otherwise!) Once that was established, the "revelations" themselves were fairly anti-climactic.
__________

[OT]: Here comes yet another "Fuehrer-diktat" bent on unlawful seizure of private property based solely on unsupported, highly speculative, and (in this case) conveniently ulterior allegations. Soon our sociopathic "Decider" will decree that entire, official components of government (Iran's, in this case) can arbitrarily be branded "terrorist" on his say-so alone!

Never mind that our OWN military has been duplicitously used to carry out an utterly unlawful war of aggression -- a willful campaign of STATE-sponsored terrorism against the people of Iraq! How soon might we see, say, the whole Democratic Party (and all other political opponents) ALSO capriciously dubbed "terror organizations" by these megalomaniacs?

Then, of course, there's the ultimate, $64,000 question: How long will it be until various and sundry Americans who staunchly oppose the odious "policies" and openly criminal conduct of this de facto dictatorship are ALSO deprived of assets in some McCarthyistic witch hunt instituted by the Bush Reich against "suspected potential terrorists"?? (After all, it's not as if the Executive Orders facilitating such "pre-emptive reprisals" against US CITIZENS aren't already written!)

Iran's Revolutionary Guards Scoff At US Blacklist Plan
[Agence France Presse]

Iran's Revolutionary Guards Thursday dismissed US plans to list the elite force as a terror group in order to strangle its growing economic power, warning that its "iron will" would not be deterred.

A US official revealed on Wednesday that President George W. Bush was set to issue an executive order blacklisting the group in order to block the assets of what is one of the Islamic republic's key institutions.

The Revolutionary Guards -- whose influence extends well beyond the military into business and politics -- would be the first national military branch included on a US list of individuals and institutions linked to terrorism. ...

Karl Rove is the enemy. He still breathes. Watch out for the republican candidate that hires him. Big money is on their side, too. Rove is only a whore for those he likes.

With declining circulation and increased competition from craigslist it is very confusing why the Washington Post and other establishment liberal dailies hire these nimrods for their op-ed pages.

The liberal majority who subscribe to these papers and who might subscribe to these papers want to read liberal opinion writers and thoughtful, occasionally insightful conservatives. You read Safire or Will because they could write elegant sentences and occasionally had something smart to say but this guy, Jonah Goldberg?

A certain type of libertarian and paleocon is now fashionable on the left; the Post and other papers would be better off - in every sense - hiring someone from reason, or the American Conservative, or antiwar.com. Outsource the occasional op-ed to the usual neocon nuts; you can't ignore them entirely. But just because you get a lot of nasty letters from outraged Bushcons - and have been for years - doesn't mean many or any of these people are going to subscribe to your newspaper because you hire a handful of them to write this junk on a weekly basis.

I always thought Rove’s most brilliant campaign was the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. McCain look to be catching fire before the North Carolina primary, but a Rove whisper campaign that 1) McCain was a bit loony from his captivity in Vietnam, 2) his wife was a alcoholic, and 3) McCain had a black love child, all put W. back in the driver’s seat. He never leaves any fingerprints, but whenever Rove is involved there is always the vilest type of whisper campaign (Ann Richards was a lesbian, an Alabama Supreme Court justice Rove worked against was a pedophile). It makes me hope there is a God, just so Rove can go to the innermost circle of Hell.

Karl Rove knows the modern Republican Party is the party of the cultural South. Since the early 90's he has tried to claim the more national and legitimate history of the northern party. It is no mistake the Texans in the White House champion resource extraction economics, a feudalistic social order, fundamentalist religion, untaxed wealth and war. These people are in the tradition of John C. Calhoun, not Abraham Lincoln. They not only revolted against desegregation but turned the tables on the reformers and, with northern allies like the neocons and the Chambers of Commerce, have begun to Dixify the US with religion in the schools, stolen elections, no safety net, rotting infrastructure and a dull but brutish aristocracy.

Michael,

I think you've stripped your GEARS SON. I know, I know, blue is yellow and your Iraq war has nothing to do with oil! JEEEESUS PEEEESUS you really do think we're stupid, especially the conservative sheep you and your co-conspirators have been feeding dogma and dog poop to for the past 7 years. I'm sure there will be a special space in W's new library extolling all the good and noble things Rove accomplished. I expect it's going to be a port-a-potty. I also suspect there will be a cozy chair at Satan's dinner table when Rove's KARMA debt comes due.

"Like I always say, you have to go back 150 years to find the last time the Republican party helped black people."
Posted by: Steve Simitzis

My response:
Those weren't just your usual Republicans, no not at all they were the "Radical Republicans", lead by Thaddeus Stevens.

The NeoConNazi model -- Gerson clearly embraces it fully:

[In] the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

~Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The main reason that Rovian tacics succeed is that they are so outrageous and biting. For example, the President's statement to the effect that the party of FDR and Kennedy is now the party of cut and run not only appeals to the GOP base but also makes the independents and moderate democrats pause and think about it.

I am yet to hear a democratic leader of any significant stature say that the President lied to send our kids to die in a premptive war. My sense is that such chutzpah will appeal even to many Republicans.

Look- he said the Republicans would help the little guy. He never said they did, or should do, anything for nobodies.
And if you help the nobodies, the unintended negative consequences of altruism will kill us all!
If Al Queada or the the Mexicans don't get us first.

William McKinley as "activist reformer" for the "little guy"???

McKinley pretty much personified the big machine big money corporatist policies of the Gilded Era - to recast him now as on the side of "little guy" is so laughable to be almost offensive.

Oh, please. The only thing about "the little guy" that Republicans have cared about for the last 20 years is what he's doing in his bedroom with another consenting adult. The Republican Party was long ago hijacked by corporatists who use the conservative christian vote as a safe conduct to the law making offices of the US.

*

Ah, it's good to bash Rove, but the failures of Bush's Administration, the unpatriotic Iraq War, the importing of an illegal immigrant slave class, and the budget deficits that are already punishing the middle class, were all schemes that the Democrats aided and abetted. Hillary, Biden, Edwards, and Kerry all voted for the Iraq War. There is no prominent Democrat today who is willing to put American lives and American jobs ahead of a permanent flow of illegal identured servants for the corporations. And Bush's Big Government blunders, from the doubling of the Department of Education's budget to the Medicare Part D Hand Out to the Health Care Industry, were all done with the blessing of the Democratic Party.

The Democrats share Bush's weaknesses, but they lack his (rare) strengths, such as his wise and Constitutional stance against the federal bans on self-defense that many liberals like to refer to as "gun control".

If Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, or McCain run in 2008, then the Democrats could be victorious. The GOP has acted as a hypocrite, preaching small government while running a Royalist Big Government. And, despite the immense flaws of the Democratic Party, the fact that they truly stand for what they claim to believe may catapult them into the White House in 2008.

On the other hand, if a Constitutionalist, such as Ron Paul, wins the GOP's nomination, and runs in the general election against either Hillary or Edwards, both socialist-lites who voted for the invasion of Iraq, then the Democrats "guaranteed" victory in 2008 could possibly vanish into thin air.

F.D.R. and his New Deal coalition hijacked the Democratic Party and turned it fully from the Party of tradition to the Party of Big Government special interest. Now that the Democrats have lost five of the past seven Presidential elections, and may very well lose the next one, it seems that this generation of Democrats is paying the price for Roosevelt's political games, which were as self-serving and cynical as Rove's.

The greatest advocates today of the toiling masses are wealthy liberal Democrat politicians

Hey, you're right. And the greatest enemy of normal Americans today is the Repukeliscum moron like you, toadbreathe. With the Democrats, you have people who have, through luck or chance or hard work, made a good thing of their life, and YET STILL are willing to help others do well. With the Repukeliscum toads like yourself, once you have made it, it's FUCK YOU to all those less fortunate. The Repukeliscum attitude today is "I've done well, now I'll step on the fingers of any less fortunate and steal all their money."

Glad we agree.

Ron Paul is clinically insane.

Ron Paul is clinically insane, but I SURE HOPE that he is the Repukeliscum nominee. It's been a long time since the Repukeliscum nominee has actually said what he/she actually meant, and Ron has the virtue of being a straight shooter. He hates the poor and wants to do them harm, and just goes out and says it. He wants to eliminate the FDA, so that drug companies can test all their medications on consumers, rather than on rabbits - if you want to see the results of that, look up "thalidomide" which should be called the "Ron Paul Love Drug." He wants to have nature red in tooth and claw as the law of the land, and as a Democrat, I would love to have that as the person that the Dem nominee runs against.

Of course, the following might also shed some light on Gerson's astounding tendency to "embellish":

Prepackaged News
[The Washington Post]

How much is good press worth? To the Bush administration, about $1.6 billion.

That's how much seven federal departments spent from 2003 through the second quarter of 2005 on 343 contracts with public relations firms, advertising agencies, media organizations and individuals, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The 154-page report provides the most comprehensive look to date at the scope of federal spending in an area that generated substantial controversy last year. Congressional Democrats asked the GAO to look into federal public relations contracts last spring at the height of the furor over government-sponsored prepackaged news and journalism-for-sale.

Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator, had been unmasked as a paid administration promoter who received $186,000 from the Education Department to speak favorably about President Bush's No Child Left Behind law in broadcast appearances. ...

What about the Do Not Call legislation? Shouldn't Rove get credit for Bush's only achievement?

Oh, jc2, Bush has an achievement? I almost forgot about... the "do not call" legislation that doesn't work, so that I still get four or five such calls every day, even though I am on the list.

As far as I'm concerned, he's still batting 1000 in the failure column. All errors, no hits.

Karl Rove means himself when the talk is about "the little guy".

The "little guy" is a phrase only a liberal democrat could use….mhr at 11:59 AM

who crap on the workers

and call them shirkers

are better than anyone who cares.

brian at 12:04 PM:

…. all schemes that the Democrats aided and abetted…
See, it's their fault: they trusted him. No matter how screwed up Republicans are, it's always someone else's fault. Always.

…they lack his (rare) strengths, such as his wise and Constitutional stance against the federal bans on self-defense…
Time to read the Second Amendment, and perhaps learn what an introductory clause is.

…… if a Constitutionalist, such as Ron Paul, wins the GOP's nomination, and runs in the general election …
Libertarians edit the Constitution for their political agenda just as much as strict constructionists do.

Back to civil rights vis-a-vis the Republican party. Take a look at the vote on the re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act just last year. Only (only?) 33 members of the House voted against it, all of them Republicans. 2 of the 3 members of the House now seeking the Republican nomination for Pres were among the shameless 33, Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul. I've yet to hear anybody take Ron Paul to task for his overt anti-Black racism, not that it would be a stumbling block for him to most Republicans.

"This shallow, juvenile sniping is an example of "tearing a piece apart"?"
-Chip

What, so you're -against- shallow, juvenile sniping now? So you're against the tactics used ad nauseum by Swift Boat Veterans, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Faux News, Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, Tony Snow, and the other Masters of Right-Wing Thought?

Tell you what ... once the Right Wing stops using straw man "moral outrage," fear-mongering, and baseless scapegoating of the Liberal Boogeyman, then maybe you'll have a leg to stand on. But as long as the ONLY kind of argument that the Right Wing can offer is shallow, juvenile sniping, your criticisms are going to come across as pretty hollow.

Did some of you TraitoRove fans even read the article? It was TraitoRove who claimed to be a champion of the "little guy." He used the word. So, get your heads out of Turdblossum's butt.

Typical. You rightards blame the Dems for failing to stop Bushco's disastrous policy choices. Remember, the Repugs had majorities in Congress from 2002-2006 and even now the Dems do not have enough votes to override a Junior veto or Repug cloture. I also seem to recall the Repugs trying to change the filibuster rules so that they could ram unqualified, far right wing judicial nominees through.

TraitoRove's entire legacy is hypocritical. Gannon services Rove regularly in the WH but GayRove attacks gays to divert attention away from real issues. Bushco are a bunch of draftdodgers but they attack those who served and they are the biggest warmongers ever. They claim to be conservatives while running up the biggest deficits in history. They attack the MSM as liberal while using it to spread neocon lies and to out undercover CIA agents. They try to privatize the entire government but instead the level of incompetence and inefficiency is beyond belief. The Iraq war was going to be financed by the oil but instead we're paying billions for the war and gas prices are sky high. Bushco promised to capture OBL and effectively fight al Qaeda; in reality, Bushco has effectively helped make al Qaeda much stronger and Junior seems to have given up on finding OBL.

TraitoRove's resignation allows him to finally go over there to join the fight against al Qaeda so that we don't have to fight Rove over here.

"Heh. Y'all just don't get it do you."
-egbert

No, egbert, I don't get it. I don't get how you can continue to defend these people, who lie to you (and to America, and to the World) over and over and over again.

After a while, it just starts to seem that you're so disconnected from the reality that the rest of us share (you know, the 60-70% of Americans, and 95+% of the world, who have seen BushCo for what they really are), that you will literally believe -anything- that a NeoCon tells you, just so you don't have to face the truth.

Is it because you can't admit that you were wrong to support Bush in the first place? Is it because you are terrified of the Liberal Boogeyman under your bed, and think that only BushCo can protect you? How do you stomach the lies, the corruption, the hypocrisy, the increased government spending, the violation of individual and states rights -- all things that True Conservatives (like me) are AGAINST?

A certain type of libertarian and paleocon is now fashionable on the left; the Post and other papers would be better off - in every sense - hiring someone from reason, or the American Conservative, or antiwar.com. Outsource the occasional op-ed to the usual neocon nuts; you can't ignore them entirely. But just because you get a lot of nasty letters from outraged Bushcons - and have been for years - doesn't mean many or any of these people are going to subscribe to your newspaper because you hire a handful of them to write this junk on a weekly basis.
Posted by: Linus on August 17, 2007 at 11:27 AM
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Do these papers keep publishing these people primarily for "red-meat" purposes because it actually *helps* their bottom line? They obviously know their opinions are not shared with most of the public and with most of their readers. IOW, if they replaced them with liberals and more reasonable conservatives would their profits actually *decline* as a result? The papers just can't be *that* thick, can they?

brian, I just want to point out that I am about as liberl as they come, and I firmly believe that "gun control"is the ability to hit your target. (And keep your emotions in check when doing so.)

"Karl Rove had one talent; winning elections."

Actually, his biggest talent was his willingness to break the law. Part of Karl Rove's appeal is due to the fact that he's a political Al Capone--a powerful gangster who breaks laws and, through an animalistic sense of danger, avoids getting prosecuted.

Rove didn't "win" 2000--he made a serious strategic blunder by sending Bush to California in the last few days of the campaign, a state Bush lost by double digits. Credit for the "victory" in 2000 belongs to Jeb Bush/Katherine Harris/Choicepoint, for successfully preventing 57,000 African-Americans (like Thomas Cooper) from voting in FL, to Rehnquist/Thomas/Scalia/OConner/ Kennedy, to an easily-led media & the right-wing media machine.

Rove did win in 2002 and 2004, I'll give him that--he won in 2002 by helping to start a pointless war that's gotten 3700 American soldiers needlessly killed. And in '04, he won with an incumbent President against Massachusetts liberal who couldn't connect to people in a time of war by 51-49%.

Rove's real talent is for crime.

brian: "F.D.R. and his New Deal coalition hijacked the Democratic Party ..."

Once again, when it comes to American history, you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Franklin Roosevelt as president twice saved this country during his 12-year tenure, first from itself by combatting the toxic residual effects of the Great Depression, and then from the threat posed of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan by exhibiting unflappable leadership and resolve as a true "war president."

But quite obviously, you would have preferred the continued benign neglect of FDR's predecessor and 1932 electoral opponent Herbert Hoover, the genial cluelessness of 1936 GOP nominee Alf Landon ("As Maine goes, so goes Vermont"), or the above-it-all pretentiousness of his 1944 opponent, New York Gov. Tom Dewey, an effete and snobbish man aptly described by fellow Republican Alice Roosevelt Longworth as "that little man on the wedding cake."

As a matter of fact, the only Republican back then who truly seemed to "get it" was Roosevelt's 1940 opponent, prominent Indiana businessman / industrialist Wendell Wilkie -- and most Republicans dropped Wilkie like a hot potato only two months before that election, after he publicly labeled as "dangerously naive" the GOP's majority isolationist wing, and then openly endorsed and supported FDR's "Lend-Lease" policy to save Great Britain.

Further, Franklin Roosevelt never forgot Wilkie's unselfish political sacrifice (which effectively sealed the man's electoral fate in the 1940 race), and shortly after that election dispatched him to London as the president's personal representative to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's beleaguered coalition government --- effectively bypassing the soon-to-resign U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy, whose self-dealing and dubious judgment Roosevelt no longer trusted.

FDR was the 4th greatest president we have ever had, after Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson.

These men were all Democrats. I know, I know, you are saying "Lincoln?" In today's world, Lincoln would have been a Democrat. The corruption, the sexual perversion, the hatred of the fellowman that is the hallmark of the Repukeliscum Party today would have nauseated Lincoln. The Party of Lincoln was destroyed by Reagan. It no longer exists. The Repukeliscum Party, the Party of Delay, Foley, and Vitter, is all that remains.

No person of honor can today be a member of that Party.

Donald from Hawaii,

Roosevelt did not save the country from the Great Depression. Rather, he prolonged it, as he not only continued the failed LIBERAL economic policies of Hoover (which were of great contrast to the noninterventionism of Harding and Coolidge), but by intensifying them.

The National Industrial Relations Act, for example, punished industry for offering goods at lower prices. One immigrant was thrown in jail for dry cleaning clothes at a cheaper price. The Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers to kill livestock and plant less during a time in which many were starving. Roosevelt even decided the price of gold by randomly picking numbers out of thin air. His rampant, uninformed interventionism added a great deal of risk to private investment; how could one invest in private industry if no one knew what Roosevelt would do next to screw up the economy? And if investing was far more dangerous, then how could new jobs be created? It should be no surprise that Roosevelt did not bring America out of the Great Depression, but rather prolonged it, by taking the worst of Hoover's liberal economics and intensifying them.

As for foreign policy, F.D.R., who liked to accuse America First of being Nazi sympathizers (despite that America First barred Nazis and fascists from their organization), ran an Administration honeycombed with Communists. Harry Dexter White, for example, discouraged negotiations with the Japanese that could have averted Pearl Harbor, as war between the U.S. and Japan would be beneficial for the U.S.S.R.

As for Stalin, F.D.R., believing anti-Communism stemmed from reactionist paranoia alone, naiively trusted Stalin, and sold half of Europe down the river to him. And the Soviet Union murdered more civilians than even Nazi Germany did.

The only reason why F.D.R. could ever be considered a "great President" is because, unlike Bush's sympathizers, who wish to rewrite history, Roosevelt's sympathizers actually have managed to do so.

Should it be such a surprise? The Democrats and the teachers unions have been scratching each other's backs for decades. No wonder the teachers would pass on their pro-Democrat bias to their students.

His rampant, uninformed interventionism added a great deal of risk to private investment;

FDR was dealing with the problems caused by capitalist wacks like yourself. Capitalism and its excesses caused the Great Depression. Thank God for FDR! Without him, millions more would have starved.

Of all the great presidents, none have been capitalist wacks. Repukeliscum like yourself cannot create, but can only loot.

Maybe he meant literally. I haven't yet met a billionaire, but maybe most of them are shorter than the average.
Apart from this lame joke I have no idea what else he was thinking of.

Capitalism and its excesses caused the Great Depression., POed Lib

Depressions have happened before in society, but the Great Depression lasted as long as it did because of Hoover's and Roosevelt's liberal economic interventionism. Hoover, like Roosevelt, diverted capital from the private market for the sake of public works (like the Hoover Dam). Hoover was, after, the "Great Engineer", but whenever he used the State, he diverted profits away from the private sector, thus creating less reward and more risk for investment. Is that any way to get an economy off the ground?

Capitalism can cure recessions. How did Harding get the U.S. out of Wilson's recession? By cutting government spending by 40% and bringing fiscal sanity to Washington, D.C. Under Harding, unemployment dropped from 12% to 3%.

If America had not been a capitalist society, the Great Depression would have not recieved as much notice, as America would always be in economic shambles and the rampant poverty economic interventionists wish to fight would have been even more widespread.

Thank God for FDR! Without him, millions more would have starved. , POed Lib

Actually, more would probably have been fed. After all, F.D.R. did pay farmers to slaughter livestock and abstain from planting higher quantities of crops. There would have been more food to sell, and food would have been cheaper, if F.D.R. had not been intervening.