Rove channeling John Kerry?

[ProSense]

Kerry: A Right and Responsibility to Speak Out

December 19, 2008

IRONY WATCH....

Karl Rove, this week:

The top priorities for the Senator who will raise his right hand on January 20, 2009, and say "I do solemnly swear" are obvious: keeping America safe and growing the economy. Less obvious is how to create a White House where forceful debate can take place. Plain speaking, straight talk, and dissent must be encouraged....

Newsweek, 2005:

It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States.... Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty.

I'm also reminded of a Time interview with a "youngish" White House aide, described as a Bush favorite, who said, "The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me. Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, 'All right. I understand. Good job.' He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom."

Go ahead, Karl, tell us another one about the importance of "forceful debates," in which "dissent must be encouraged" in the White House.

I had no idea he had such a sense of humor.

Karl "Criminal" Rove is a clown, but is that the same Bush who the media portrayed as the guy everyone wants to have a beer with?

[ProSense]

1. The Top Dozen Insights of Conservatives, 2008

The Top Dozen Insights of Conservatives, 2008

By Greg Anrig - December 19, 2008, 10:28AM

It was a brutal year for the conservative movement, which at long last came crashing down after dominating American politics for nearly 30 years. One small consolation for at least some leading thinkers on the right is that they began to demonstrate perceptiveness that by and large eluded them in preceding years. Here are the top twelve insights of prominent conservatives in 2008:

more

[Clio the Leo]

2. kick NT

[karynnj]

3. Bush as sold was a fraud

and the media knew it - they occasionally covered him when he was the mean drunk black sheep of a family that also contained Neil Bush, who was involved in the S&L crisis. The Rove quote is completely night and day from the past words he has said.

Whet Rove is saying now is startlingly different - but I doubt he has the moral core to understand what John Kerry was saying, much less repeat it. What he was speaking against was morally wrong - way past being just not correct.

[ProSense]

4. Agree,

he is feigning interest in valuing dissent purely for the purpose of being contrary.





edited typo.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. this comment on the article says it better than any of the 'con sages'

Conservativism" is a catchall term that is trotted out to mean whatever the plutocracy is in favor of at the moment.

Many of the real goals have to do with increasing the wealth and power of a small group. Thus we have had the battle over the estate tax, the changes in capital gains and dividend income taxation, etc.

Since such outright self interest isn't appealing this group has sponsored a large number of think tanks whose job it is to provide some intellectual cover for greed. We have seen a continual stream of such "theoretical" justifications: trickle down, Laffer curves, wealthy entrepreneurship, etc.

None of these nostrums has ever been backed up by actual data.

Now this wealthy group is faced with a dilemma. The propaganda has failed and even the most blind follower of their ideology has come to realize that something is wrong. There are two choices:
1. Admit that the philosophical basis was bunk
or
2. Blame individuals as an attempt to preserve the "philosophy"

Obviously the discredited pundits are going for door #2.

When the downturn is over and the American Horatio Alger dream is revived the cycle will start again and the GOP will once again be able to attract those who are motivated by selfishness and anger.