Impossible!

The White House announced today that Karl Rove is resigning and going back to Texas to spend more time with his family and probably write a book. Seriously. This is comparable to President Bush saying that he made a huge mistake in going into Iraq, and announcing an immediate pullout that would have all our troops home for Christmas. And now, as the pundits weigh in, we are hearing that the Rove resignation is a signal that the dreams of a permanent Republican majority are shattered, all is lost, Bush's agenda is a failure, etc., etc., etc.

Look. That's just crap, OK? Karl may formally resign his post in the White House, but he is definitely not going back to Texas to spend time with his family and write a book. He will be up to his creased, greasy little neck in political skullduggery on a grand scale. Working for his still unrealized dream, his "permanent Republican majority," as defined by Karl Rove.

My guess is he may write off the 2008 presidential campaign except for some light consulting and some paid speaking engagements to fire up the RNC's fundraising abilities. But no heavy lifting. There's a lot of money still to be made out here in the land of international consulting, and Karl is on the "cutting edge" so to speak, nicely positioned to do very well!

After all, he's already performed the impossible: At the very same time he trivialized the Presidency, he greatly expanded the powers of the Executive Branch. (He also thoroughly gutted and debased his own political party, but that's another column.) At some point in the not too distant future, I can see him sequestered with his charts, and his numbers, and his good old precinct by precinct analyses of the relevant states. Maybe he'll spend his time developing a strategy, and tinkering with his tactics (Karl's ALL about tactics.), and rebuilding, so the Republicans, as he has redefined them, can take Congress back in 2010.

You really don't need to be a genius to figure Karl Rove out. He isn't masterful. He's base. At heart, he is just a vicious, mean-spirited, nasty little man. He doesn't think big. He is a consummate cynic. He thinks small. His entire toxic strategy is based on distorting information to deliberately keep people in the dark, which, in a democracy should be a capital crime, and playing to people's fears. The reason he's been so amazingly effective, is because too many people abdicated their own responsibility, and surrendered their autonomy to him. He did what he did, because we let him.

Karl Rove callously redefined the concept of corruption in a democratic system of government in scope and on a scale we never dreamed possible. It would be easy to write that all off as part of some huge conspiracy. The collusion by the corporate conglomerates that run our news media. Wall Street. Halliburton. Enron. The oil guys. The drug companies. Lobbyists. But the fact is, both parties in Congress were supposed to be our firewall. Instead, the concept of checks and balances was alien to them.They should have been there for us, but they hung us out to dry. They just caved in. And so did too many of us.

It is both absolutely correct, and a gross over simplification to hang this eight year disaster solely around the necks of Rove, Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney. We all own a piece of it. One thing is sure. We've had eight hellish years to really experience Karl's political vision of America. If he stages a comeback, we have only ourselves to blame. The pundits can speculate about what this so called announced resignation means for days. But one thing we should all be able to agree on, is that this so-called resignation doesn't mean anything at all.

Copyright, 2007