Karl Rove is a Genius
Geez, this is a blinding flash of the obvious from Karl Rove. Via a Time interview.
“The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I’d expected,” Rove tells TIME. “Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass.”
Now, here is where the brilliance comes in
There is no mention of the Democratic platform, ideas, or credit. No, the article is about how the Republicans lost, they blew it, because of the corruption that tainted everyone and the elections were close. No Democratic credit.
The Republican National Committee has been pointing out that a small shift in votes would have made a big difference. A shift of 77,611 votes would have given Republicans control of the House, according to Bush’s political team. And a shift of 2,847 votes in Montana, or 7,217 votes in Virginia, or 41,537 votes in Missouri would have given a Republicans control of the Senate. In addition, the party has calculated that the winner received 51 percent or less in 35 contests, and that 23 races were decided by two percentage points or fewer, 18 races were decided by fewer than 5,000 votes, 15 races were decided by fewer than 4,000 votes, 10 races were decided by fewer than 3,000 votes, eight were decided by fewer than 2,000 votes and five races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.
This is about framing the election loss for the next election cycle. There is some “covering of the collective asses” as well. It is about winning. Just ask any Bills fan about “Wide right” and ask them how many Superbowl wins the Bills have.
Framing the election loss as “close” allows the Republicans to say it wasn’t their ideas it was other things. A few bad apples of corruption if you will.
Don’t play into this crap when you are talking about the election.
The National Republican party (never have so few benefited at the expense of so many) was summarially dismissed because their ideas have failed.
- Reform Social Security (Remember Bush’s road show?)
- Outsource Port Security (Remember the outrage?)
- Stem Cell Research (Muzzling American scientific prowess)
- Terri Schivao (National Health care for 1)
- Tax Cuts for the wealty (Gee $400 doesn’t go as far as it used to)
- Outsouring Jobs (why is everythig made in China?)
- Still looking for Osama (who is he again?)
- Staying the course in Iraq. (nothing needs to be said here)
The list just goes on.
Right - if they’d just shifted around those 77,000 votes, and if pigs had wings…
I love when they talk about shifting votes around. There were about 15 races the Dems lost by less than 6000 votes. So shift another 90,000 votes to the Dems and they’d have another 15 seats. What does that prove?
On another (related) note: isn’t it interesting how much the media wants to go after Dems for not having a coherent plan on this, that and the next thing? No discussion of the Democrat’s new-found leadership role can be complete without mentioning that there are at least three different proposals on the table at any one time.
Wait. I thought that the problem was that Democrats didn’t have any ideas? Now, it’s that they have too many. And seeing as none of them are in the White House at the moment, therefore none of them can actually *implement* any idea in Iraq, what they have to say about it really doesn’t count for all that much in the first place.
But more importantly (to me, anyways) is that I personally think that the problem we have now (the problem that Republicans found themselves victim to just recently) is quite the opposite: that virtually all Republicans seem to be operating from the same play book, and they’re all wrong. It’s like intellectual incest; I prefer the gene pool upon which my leader’s opinions rely to be diverse, thank you.