Carville: Conclusive evidence Rove lost a generation for GOP; party will "irrigate his grave"

[DeepModem Mom]

Financial Times: How Karl Rove lost a generation of Republicans
By James Carville
Published: August 14 2007

.... The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.

A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government.

It is not just Democracy Corps that has found this. A host of new polls and surveys over the course of the past few months has served as a harbinger of a rocky 2008 election for Republicans.

The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.

Mr Rove’s famous electoral strategy – focusing on the Republican base first – is also largely responsible for a shift in international public opinion against the US. It would not be fair to blame Mr Rove for the Iraq war. But it is clearly fair to blame his strategy for the Terry Schiavo fiasco and the Republicans’ adherence to the policies and doctrines of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson. The world and now most of the US are contemptuous of the theocratic underpinnings of the policy Mr Rove ushered into government....

***

He has been assistant to the president, senior advisor and deputy chief of staff. Mr Rove was the architect of social security reform, immigration, the hiring and firing of justice department officials and the placement of literally thousands of ideologically driven buffoons throughout the US government. As deputy chief of staff he was also responsible for handling the White House post-Katrina reconstruction efforts....If the trends hold, the one thing that we can be sure of is that Mr Rove’s political grave will receive no lack of irrigation from future Republicans.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/fbe0b986-4a8d-11dc-95b5-0000779fd2ac.html

[Kagemusha]

1. But the trend won't hold. Hippies turned into Republicans as they aged.

So why should Rove care what they think right now? It won't be what they feel in 10 or 20 years. They'll go with their heart and with truthiness.

[DaveinMD]

6. voting patterns do tend to hold

remember, many hippies didn't vote.

[murielm99]

23. Many so-called hippies were too young to vote.

We had to be 21 to vote back then.

[MADem]

7. Well, that means all these shallow College Republicans will get mellow and liberal as THEY age NT

[ClassWarrior]

8. Quit buying the Corporate Media meta-myths.

:eyes:

NGU.

[mike_c]

10. ah, my dear Kagemusha....

Some of didn't, and won't. Ever.

[WCGreen]

13. The hippies got all the press....

It was the young white collar grads who out numbered the Hippies that are still voting republican...

That trend started back in the late 70's...

Anecdotally, all my hippie friends have remained liberal in life style and voting preference..

[calimary]

18. Speak for yourself. THIS hippie remained a hippie.

And a staunch liberal Dem.

[ClayZ]

20. Aging hippie here, and the older

I get the further left I am!

[murielm99]

21. Former hippie, lifelong Democrat here.

Stop making sweeping generalizations. They make you look stupid.

[Kagemusha]

24. Fine! Sorry! Extremely sorry! I apologize! I heavily, heavily apologize!!!!!

I forgot there are no devil's arguments, only devils, and I have approached you all as a devil, not as someone saying what Rove might have in mind. I apologize for DEEPLY insulting and wounding you and bringing shame and embarrassment to this message board and will trouble you no more by continuing this pathetic waste of a distraction that should never have existed. I am very very sorry.

[OutNow]

22. NOT

Maybe this hippie turned into a fat bald old guy, but I have not turned into a Republican. Not,no,never,nope, didn't happen, won't happen, not a chance, forget about it, no way. I spent 25 years living and working in Texas and voted for 1 winning congressional candidate in all that time; Martin Frost. A good guy. Tom Delay's redistriting crap ended Frost's career. It really sucked seeing Democrats lose by 20 or 30 percent year after year.

I retired and moved to Oregon this year to be closer to family. Lots of old hippies here and lots of elected Democrats.

[ima_sinnic]

26. oh bullshit. I was and always will be a so-called hppie and I don't know

ANYone who "turned into a Republican." My communards went on to become renowned artists and writers for the most part--one of them, in fact, is well known in these discussions as a journalist in Ohio exposing election fraud on a daily basis.

[napi21]

2. As much as I'd like to kick Carve\\ille in the .... lately, he has some good

points in that article. He was right when he was working to get BC elected. I hope he still is!

[thunder rising]

5. He is a very clever and intelligent

He is a very clever and intelligent person and he betrayed the US no less than Colin Powell. He's playing for his paycheck now. Forget him (and that's not the F word I want to use). He had his chance to stand and be a part of the solution instead he stayed with the DLC and carried water for Bush boy and his company of killers.

[OwnedByFerrets]

15. Right on Thunder.nt

[thunder rising]

3. Stand in line *, I intend to "piddle a litte" first

[StClone]

14. I am one for five

My family and friends have recently developed this life time goal of pissing on hated historical figures. We've whizzed on Joe McCarthy's grave and are aiming to get four more. Three are still living (one is dead and we are biding our time to strike). I personally can't waited for Limbaugh to kick off -- it's going to be deluge. Hey Pigboy don't worry you won't feel a thing. :evilgrin:

[Manifestor_of_Light]

16. But do you mind standing in line?

:evilgrin:

[StClone]

17. Not at all

It may be standing room only though some may be wanting to squat. :rofl:

[havocmom]

4. Carville is still alive?

Is his wife?

[rodeodance]

9. Keep dumping it on!

[drm604]

11. Iraq war.

It would not be fair to blame Mr Rove for the Iraq war.

Why the hell not?

The people responsible for this war wouldn't be in power if it weren't for Rove! Also, he was involved in the pre-war propaganda campaign.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

12. I will be quite happy...

When I see them sitting on subway grates on cold winter's days, in their tattered Brooks Brothers suits, with a tin cup and a sign that says "I am a political veteran. Can you spare an electoral vote".

[gratuitous]

19. Carville may be right; Rove has punted a generation for the GOP

But it didn't necessarily follow that the Democrats would make much of a pick up. I credit Dean's 50 state strategy for being in the right place at the right time to pick up the pieces. All that local organizing, which we should keep doing by all means, has provided a fertile ground for folks to plug into when they get disgusted with the current political scene dominated by the GOP.

[PurityOfEssence]

25. Bullshit: 2002 was not an "almost historically impossible context"

They played this one well, but it wasn't "masterful", and the deck was stacked COMPLETELY for anyone unscrupulous enough to play it the way they did. As Max Cleland put it so well, they "scared the pants off of" everyone; anyone who wasn't a Republican was a craven sellout to the terrorists, and they played their "victory" card from Afghanistan so resoundingly that everybody essentially folded.

This is the hallmark of Rove's "genius": he's not one, he's simply so immoral (that's immoral, not amoral) that people are impressed by the sheer chutzpah of his viciousness. It's easy to play on fear and use that to gain a few seats.

Where Carville gets the concept of that juncture in history being a hard row to hoe is something he needs to explain. Just because it's a mid-term of a first-term president doesn't mean crap when viewed against the backdrop of the well-fertilized xenophobic terror of Americans, watered with the glee of a quick and seemingly decisive victory and served up at a banquet where the opposition party is tarred with being the enemy. Any tin-horn absolutist could whip up that kind of frenzy, and most could have milked it for bigger gains than this coven of second-raters managed to get.

What happened to Carville? Consorting with that pursed-lipped harpy seems to have leached any sense right out of his head.

[ima_sinnic]

27. in one small comparable situation, after the Jamaican version of the GOP

(Jamaica Labour Party) won in the 1980s, with major US help, including provision of guns and massive inputs of cash, and went on to wreck the lives of the people, the People's National Party has won every election since the JLP's one disastrous term by healthy margins. My Jamaican husband says the people have a long memory and will not be fooled again by the despised JLP--which has since splintered, after the US candidate, Seaga, resigned from politics, and I predict the same fate for the GOP, the "caveman party," on the fast track to extinction.