Rove: "The gap between Mr. Obama's approval rating among Democrats (88%) and Republicans (27%) is 61 points. This "approval gap" is 10 points bigger than George W. Bush's at this point in his presidency, despite Mr. Bush winning a bitterly contested election. "

That is hilarious. He acts like a 51 point gap isn't among the most polarizing in American history. Earth to Karl: Obama isn't polarizing because of anything he has done or not done, he's polarizing because the entire Republican party and media machine is telling it's audience to hate him no matter what he does. Not much Obama can ever do to fix that.

Well, of coure, Bush brought people together--by the time he left office, 4/5 of the country hated him.

Rove's next column will be about how Obama is a fat, balding, pig-faced white guy.

From Wikipedia: In psychology, psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism where a person's personal attributes, unacceptable or unwanted thoughts, and/or emotions are ascribed onto another person or people. Projection occurs when a person's own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.

Do you think the entire GOP might be infected with the Projection Virus? Don't hold your breath waiting for their come to jesus moment. Projection is in their DNA.

Not that Rove's B.S. has any merit but Obama could go the extra mile to shut Rove up by actually getting rid of the Office of Political Affairs.

It was Rove's home which certainly puts the lie to his g*d awful whining about "petty partisanship". Rove is the poster prick for "petty partisanship".

But it would still be nice if the OPA could be junked. Apparently it's a taxpayer funded office and the concept is gross.

Related - http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15880.html

This is just a continuation of Rove's longtime strategy: attack where your opponent is strong and you're weak. If he can call a bronze-star-winning officer a draft-dodging hippie (and his own draft-dodging boss a war hero), then calling Obama partisan isn't even a stretching exercise.

This tactic has always relied on the complaisance of reporters, who should have said "What have you been smoking?" decades ago.

Bush brought Americans together across party lines by neglecting to secure the country against the hostile enterprise ("Al Quaeda determined to strike...") that culminated on September 11, 2001. Clever, and unworthy of emulation.

And any of this is new for Rove? He's the king of projection.

Good discussion of projection, Chopin. The GOP has had this mental disorder for decades now; the late, great Molly Ivins mentioned it frequently in her columns.

A possible reason that the syndrome has persisted so long, and even increased, is how effective it's been.

The things that Republicans accuse their opponents of doing are truly reprehensible. If it were to be generally known that these are actually the actions of the accusers themselves, the public would be justifiably disgusted with the GOP, and enraged that these guys would dare to project their own loathsome deeds upon others.

But the corporate media is in the tank for the GOP and acts as if it has no memory. How many disgraced, convicted officials from the Reagan and Nixon administrations were appointed by George Bush (the Lesser), without a word from the MSM about their scabby histories? That's right - all of them.

If more people could see through Republican bluster and accusation, they'd be doomed as a major party.

If Karl Rove were a movie projector, he'd be bigger than IMAX.

Maybe if they rewrite history before history decides their fate...aw heck, I don't really know what the media game plane is any more but I'd sure like to know how Rove still gets airtime. Do they flip a coin to decide who gets to be on top?

Important fact:

The "polarization" is being driven primarily by Democrats, NOT Republicans. Repubs are as dissatisfied with Obama as they were with Clinton. In other words, Repubs are always sore losers. On the other hand, Democrats are MORE happy with Obama than they have been with other presidents at the start of their terms. Stated differently, Dems are more likely to give new presidents the benefit of the doubt.

Those are my understanding of the numbers.

Given the republican tendency to redirect, the wait won't be long before we begin hearing about the Left's 'projection problems'. I'd expect Hannity or Limbaugh to immediately begin watering down the term.

It would be interesting to have a psychologist write a profile on Rove's personality. He may very well be unconscious about his projection. On the other hand, at the end of the day the effect of his rhetorical strategy is double speak. It's a political strategy built upon lying. Only psychopaths could pull it off with such ease.

Yes and no. Rove may be projecting, but it's based in truth. He is a master manipulator.

On what do I base this?

The photograph of Obama at the White House visit (made at his request) with the two Bushes, Clinton and Carter. While Carter stood well off to the side, Obama was snuggled in between Bush 41 and Bush 43, and all but Carter were smiling toothily and genuinely into the lens.

Obama had already been assimilated into the corporatocratic borg by the time that photo was taken.

http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2009/01/the-ex-presidents.html

Clearly an ongoing attempt by Rove to turn his schizoid personality into a political asset. One of the hallmarks of a psychotic person is the symptom of projection, wherein the disordered person ascribes his/her own faults to others. Rove's been doing this for years,maybe his entire life for all I know. Of course, we've long known that he and most other right wingers never take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This, too, is the sociopath's calling card. One could be caught in the middle of, say, stabbing someone in the back and claim it wasn't him/her and anyway he was just trying to help by removing the knife. Just about every statement and behavior of Republicans now can be found in the DSM-IV.

To Rove, the political world is a polarizing, high-spending, low competence, con game. Why would the world change just because someone else is in office?

If all you've known is hammers, everything looks like a nail.

Rove understands BHO's longterm game, and what a danger it represents to the Republican party.

The Repubs can only win by creating severe polarization; it's been the foundation of everything they do since 1964, and if BHO can get a large percentage of the country to view its needs and goals as a collective rather than antagonistic activity, the Republican party is out of business.

If Karl Rove weren't an evil troll in semi-human form, I'd suspect him of being a performance artist.

I think Nate Silver mentioned that the reason the nation appears to be so polarized between Rep/Dem is that only the truly crazy conservatives (those who hate Obama regardless) still self-identify as Republicans. It's something like 26% of the total population, a historic low. Most people - those who, thankfully, don't watch Glenn Beck - think he's doing just fine.

Kevin's got it right: just some of that revisionist history. Thank goodness Jon Stewart has the youtube clips to remind everyone of how it really was.

Earth to Karl:
It's NOT working.
Just because Politico runs it, doesn't mean that anyone really believes it.
If real voters actually believed the crap that you have trained the media to say for you, you would have a nice office in the West Wing, John McCain would be President and plans for Bush Oedipal Monument would be drawn up for the National Mall.

My reaction to Karl Rove was best summarized by Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks: how can I miss you when you won't go away?

Be fair. Any criticism Rove makes of Obama will be ironic, since Bush was guilty of pretty much any sin of governance you can name.

The poll does not take into account the almost total death of moderate Republicans.

The disparity is far more likely to be the result of the GOP's shift to obstructionism than to Obama's inclusion of advisors from variety of ideologies.

Without a common base line for all the polls from each administration, this poll only shows the extremity of differences of the two politicial parties. It does nothing to show how far either has moved away from or toward a base line value.

Sore Losers / Sore Losers / Losers

Noogs observes "In other words, Repubs are always sore losers."

They're sore winners, too. For what it's worth, the Modern Republican Party seems motivated primarily by rage, tinged with fear, jealousy, racism, and a strong sense of victimization.

They're just sore, period.

A republican specialty is projecting their own faults and tactics onto their opponents. They have honed the hypocrisy to a fine edge and it really isn't news when they operate that way.

They're like trolls on a blog - malicious and irritating as a burr under your saddle blanket, so why do we continue to feed them by giving them cyber space where we don't have to?

Ok lets play with misleading statistics:

In each door we have a population of 100 divided into 2 parties.

In the first door - the population is evenly divided between the parties - 50%/50%. Within each party, 50% approve and 50% don't approve. In other words - fully 1/2 of the population approves and 1/2 disaproves. In other words even though as many people approve as disapprove, the president is NOT a polarizing figure because there is no difference between the parties. accroding to Rove, such a president is the epitome of a uniter, isn't he?

In the second door - 95% of the people belong to one party and 5% to the other. Of the 95% of the people in the one party, they all approve. Of the 5% of the other party - none approve. Thus, even though the president has the support of 95% of the population, he is wildly polarizing because there is a 200% difference between the parties (100% for vs 100% against)

See what is clearly wrong with the second argument of measuring polarity by simply comparing the respective % approval rate of each party?

Just want to repeat the correct answer, provided above by paul:

This is just a continuation of Rove's longtime strategy: attack where your opponent is strong and you're weak.

To simply call this projecting is to miss the fundamental point.

It's a cry for help, he's really just substituting Obama for himself. A backhanded confession?

Just say for the sake of argument that one of the distinguishing characteristics of conservatism is an elemental loathing of people whose first name is Obama. Then, let's say a guy by the name of Obama gets elected and does everything he can to reach out to you, to solicit your opinions and cooperation, to take your views into consideration and incorporate them as much as he can into his policies, recognizing that he has obligations as well to the people who voted for him. Assume, just for the sake of argument, that by any fair-minded standard this guy Obama has tried more than any leader in history to act in a bi-partisan way. But, then, after all of that conservatives still opposed him by record margins because they just can't get beyond their hatred of guys with the name Obama. Would you then say that this guy Obama was the most polarizing leader in history. You would if you were a conservative and accustomed to blaming everyone else for your own actions.

Even more importantly, why is the WSJ giving any print space to the opinions of this loser. He and his Republican cronies managed to pretty much destroy most of this nation through their own quest for political power. Now, the WSJ continues to broadcast Rove's snarks as if they were news worthy. I already know what Rove will write before the WSJ publishes.

"You don't attack their weaknesses, you attack their strengths" Karl Rove (IIRC).

Of course that's exactly what he is doing (the question at the end of the post is clearly rhetorical). Rove knows he has no credibility. Therefore he loses nothing by making absurd claims and gains nothing by making claims which might be convincing on the merits.

He sees his role as injecting memes* into the discussion. It works. The question "does Obama rely on knocking down straw men" is asked by main stream journalists (Jake Tapper on his twitter feed and Helene Cooper in the New York Tiems April 7. The name "Rove" is not attached to the question. The irony is lost. The discussion is influenced.

Matt Drudge too has zero credibility and great influence. Rove knows exactly what he is doing.

To go a bit tinfoil, the absurd irony might even be deliberate and it draws attention. The discussion of whether Rove has managed to out brazen himself plants the phrase in journalists minds.

* come on seriously people managed for millions of years without the word "meme." Surely if I were literate I could find a synonym in real authentic actual English.

It's been true for a long time that right-wingers will say ANYTHING to get, and keep, power. Anything. So, at the moment, as they lose power, the right is saying any damned stupid thing that comes into their collective heads, on the theory that if they throw enough crap at the wall, something might stick. They've been doing this for a long, long time.

It just barely worked in 2004, to get Bush re-elected against an inept Kerry campaign. It's barely worked enough times for the Right to hold power long enough to fuck up everything it touched.

They just want power, so they can taste its fruits, and give our national wealth to their rich friends. Period. That's it.

For Rove, even ideological pleasures have little importance. He just likes having power.

He may be projecting, as a way to avoid having all his accusations thrown back in his face, but I think it's more a matter of just throwing up any damned thing he can think of, and hoping it benefits him in some way. He still has that nice, high-paying job with Fox..that may be enough, for the moment.

But never forget, Rove wants the White House back, and he'll say, and do, just about anything to have it.

Projecting one's own worst aspects onto the other has all kinds of benefits (self-inoculation, creating a he-said/she-said and/or "they all do it" narrative, etc....); SOP for the Republicists. This shite just needs to be answered in kind. I'm wondering how self-professed christians can be so....evil?