Dallas Morning News: Rove saw rise, fall of GOP dream

[seafan]

Rove saw rise, fall of GOP dream

By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
August 14, 2007

AUSTIN – And then there were none.

The resignation of Karl Rove means that the last – and most important – member of George W. Bush's Texas inner circle is gone.
One by one, the team that Mr. Bush took to Washington has left.
Mr. Rove, the guiding force of Mr. Bush's political career, will be gone by month's end. And his departure is a signal that there are no more big legislative or political battles for Mr. Rove to fight – and little chance Mr. Bush could win them anyway.
"It was time for us to think about the next chapter," Mr. Rove told reporters Monday aboard Air Force One bound for Crawford.


Mr. Rove was with George W. Bush at the beginning, planning his first race for governor and sketching the outlines of winning the White House years before Mr. Bush had ever held political office.
Without Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush would not have run for governor, probably never won the White House. .....
But all presidents become lame ducks in the final years. And for Mr. Bush, the loss of his buoyant political strategist underscores the cruel nature of lame duck status – and the demise or Mr. Rove's hopes of a Republican realignment for a generation.


"What we've witnessed is both the rise and fall of his political dream," said David Gergen, an adviser to other presidents. "Karl will go on, but the dream has gone smash, to create an enduring Republican majority." ..... In the process, he brought a politics of division, a strategy of winning by cultivating an increasingly polarized electorate and motivating a majority around the kinetic issues of terrorism, gay marriage, tax cuts and conservative values.
That made winning elections easier but governing much more difficult.
"They made a judgment that you can govern the country and get large changes done with bare majorities, with 51 percent and steamrolling the opposition," Mr. Gergen said.
"The history has been that if you wanted to get the large things done in Washington, you need to do it with supermajorities. They went the other way."

.....

In much the same way, the Republican defeats in 2006, in which the Democrats took control of Congress, tarnished his political reputation for the first time.
The day after last November's election debacle, Mr. Rove went into the Oval Office and told Mr. Bush that the election actually was much closer than many believed.
He said that with a shift of just 3,000 votes, Republicans would have held on to the Senate. A shift of 70,000 votes nationwide, he said, and the GOP would have maintained control of the House.
It was Mr. Rove's way of reassuring the president that the election was only a detour, not a derailment, on the road to an enduring Republican majority.
But for now, Mr. Bush's low job approval ratings and the resistance of a Democratic Congress will stymie many of the major initiatives he and Mr. Rove long dreamed of.

.....

Mr. Rove and his wife, Darby, have built a house in Florida's Panhandle. Many thought former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was the one who would follow his father to the White House, and for all the talk of Bush fatigue, America's political memory is short.

In 2012, Jeb Bush will be 59 – prime time for a run at the presidency.

If Karl Rove is right, the machinery of Republican re-emergence is still very much in place, awaiting the right circumstances and the right candidate.
For now, with the political winds as unfavorable as they are, Mr. Rove says he's retiring. But who can rule out the possibility that there, on the bright sands of the Republican Riviera, the Architect might regroup.

It's time to scrutinize Karl's little beach house in the Florida panhandle, once again.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. We need to work on the destruction of the GOP machine -- NOW

I know it's a lot of fun to complain about the DLC or Cindy's latest misquote, but in terms of party work, the castration of the Republican Machine should be a priority. Organizing has always been their strong point and our WEAK one. We need to turn that around ASAP.

Atwater, Viguerie, Gingrich, and Bauer all self-destructed and ended up as back-benchers (well, Atwater died). Rove is a clever guy and will probably not meet that fate unless we help him. There are also at least a dozen talented organizers in the Greed and Oil Party who we also have to target. And don't for one second forget that they are targeting US.

--p!

[Supersedeas]

2. the Republican Riviera -- Swiftboat nation rests in a sunny place??