Rove had “every social disadvantage imaginable”
By on Oct 19th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Rove had “every social disadvantage imaginable”
in high school, according to a former classmate. “Physically immature, no athletic ability, wasn’t good with the girls, nothing.” Another woman remembers Rove as “endearing,” but “too flippin’ geeky.”
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Kathy Wagstaff-Emery actually admitted to this?
October 19th, 2006 at 10:05 am*crickets chirping*
October 19th, 2006 at 10:05 amSounds like me!
So, why didn’t I turn out to be evil?
October 19th, 2006 at 10:05 amSad to hear that Rove was a geek in school, but he is a geek as an adult as well, but also a thug who helps Bush to screw over nation!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:06 amRove is a devious sociopath.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:06 amHe could not get some then, I am sure he can’t get it now!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:06 amNot surprising.
I’m also not really proud that it’s being offered up as read meat to the crew for dissection. Being a dork in high school isn’t exactly uncommon, or a good basis for judgement of someone’s eventual character or potential success.
Judging him on the -now- is sufficient.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:09 amWell, maybe if some girl with foresight might have given him some he might not have turned out to be such a flippin nasty person.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:10 amOkay, I’m not a fan of Rove or his tactics – but who the heck cares if he was made fun of in high school?
What’s the point? It just makes the us look childish and small.
Stick to the issues, and skip the personal attacks.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:10 amwhat is the purpose if this post?
October 19th, 2006 at 10:11 amAgreed. Does this really deserve to be on Thinkprogress? I like to think of Rove as an evil genius who’d stop at nothing to win, but grow up, guys.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:13 amStill to the issues. Don’t get distracted into (what is or could be interpretted as) an ad hominem attack.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:15 amHear that girls? Save your country from some unforseen future horror. Do a nerd today.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:16 amRove likes to do his dirty work undercover, and behind the curtains, so TP is just trying to drag Karl out into the sunlight to expose what a vile slug that geek has become!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:17 amNO KIDDING…
October 19th, 2006 at 10:18 amNothing wrong with being geeky, Rove’s just plain evil.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:18 amWhy are you giving ammunition to the other side by publishing this infantile personal attack on Mr. Rove?!!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:21 amRove has a uncanny resemblence to Himmler, who was a geek just like Karl, so a nerd can grow up to be diabolical fiend too!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:24 amDon’t forget unnapproachably unnattractive.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:26 amFunny,
Because now he is the best at what he does. If only the Dems had something close to Rove. You guys would never lose. Sadly, you guys find people like Dean to hold you back :(
October 19th, 2006 at 10:26 amThis topic is pathetic.
Many kids grow up as geeks, me being one.
Must be a really slow news day.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:26 amPull this. This is a non-story. It’s personal, childish, and serves no purpose other than to demean another person.
This is the kind of stuff we get upset about when the right attacks someone’s person instead of someone’s stance on an issue.
This makes us no better than them. I personally NEVER resort to name calling, personal attacks, or the like. It accomplishes nothing while reducing the debate to the level of a 4th grade playground dispute.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:28 amI agree bobcat_grad.
This thread is inane.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:30 amSadly, you guys find people like Dean to hold you back :(
Really? Huh… seems that his 50 state strategy is working. His approach of rebuilding local Democratic parties is a long term solution to a long term problem.
It just so happens that the inneptness of the GOP is speeding up how quickly Dean’s strategy is coming to fruition.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:31 amAnd?
He probably also threw a tantrum when he was 3, and shat his pants before he was potty-trained.
This piece is pathetic. No wonder it appeared in a tabloid; remarkable that you folks found it worth highlighting.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:35 amLOL no reason for anyone to get upset about this thread subject! Karl Rove has given old high school pics of Bill Clinton to the press to ridicule > Bill was a big chunky guy in school > so anyway this is just to throw some mud on Karl Rove, and perhaps he might get pissed enough to show his ugly fat face!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:35 amyeah, it’s interesting, maybe, but on the wrong site.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:35 amthis site, as a major linked resource for info that we use in arguments, must be kept clean of this sort of thing, imho. you should probably pull pull it, and maybe even apologise?
This explains his sociopathic behavior.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:35 amThis topic does serve a purpose. It’s what we can expect to hear from his lawyers during his sentencing.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:39 amSmiff > why the hell should anyone apologize to Karl Rove? That freak has harmed America, so he must apologize to the entire nation, then he should be sent into exile to Siberia!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:40 amHey, #25, THAT’s the kind of news that should be listed here: underhanded tactics by the GOP trying to suppress voter turnout.
It’s simple: Republicans don’t want people to vote. The smaller the turnout, the better for them.
Good find.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:40 amKarl Rove looks like a giant baby.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:40 ambobcat,
October 19th, 2006 at 10:43 amI think Rove’s appearance and personality have everything to do with his destructive politics.
Why was my post deleted??
WTF is wrong with you TP?
October 19th, 2006 at 10:44 am32: bobcat,
It appears my post was deleted..
The NAZI’s at TP are at it again.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:49 ami don’t think this is an attack. it’s stating something that can be psychologically important. if rove felt castrated as a young man, his political prowess today may be nothing more than a battle of will (his weakness vs. the perceived strengths of his castrators), and thus an attempt to avenge his self. all that attributed to his early castration (it goes beyond rove to accept responsibility for any of his actions—the irony need not be stated) may be in the cross hairs of his political castration machine. he was a “geek” (whatever that means) and scrawny, now he wants war. he was left without women, now he wants to control what they can and cannot do. the information, though i believe known for some time, is indeed relevant. if rove is acting only out of revenge and resentment, he falls into the slave morality and resentement that nietzsche spoke so frequently of. this alone may explain why all that was “good” in rove’s previous life (at the very least the things he coveted but could not have) has now become “evil” (not bad, but evil) under this dictatorshi….i mean political team. this type of psychological motivation propels all of us through our daily lives, but not all of us react out of spite, and it seems reasonable to believe that few of us react in the violently dishonest, alternate reality, sociopathic manner that rove has during the past decade; during the past six years, he has been like a mad [not genius mad, but mad ;(]scientist, who has thrown out all forms of reason, all lessons learned by past cultures, civilizations, etc., and managed to conduct experiments on OUR government that has taken it closer to the edge of collapse than ever before. so, if he was a “geek” and he is acting out of resentement, the psychological insight may prove to be helpful. in fact……it may prove to be his weakness…..
October 19th, 2006 at 10:51 am#33 –
Okay. It might. Environment plays a huge role in a person’s life, and perhaps getting picked on in high school or feelings of inadequecy led Rove to use the ruthless, unethical political tactics that he does.
But people who try to pin the left for being petty and without substance are given ammunition when a post like this is made on TP. The average US citizen (I’m sorry to say), doesn’t take the time to think through the ‘why’ most of the time and only focuses on the ‘what.’
The ‘what’ here is that ThinkProgress posted a story pointing out that a key GOP political strategist was a geek in high school and girls didn’t like him. It come across as petty and unimportant.
The corresponding ‘why’ may be that his experiences formed his personality into what it is today and may explain his distateful political tatics.
But no one really takes the time to look at the ‘why.’
October 19th, 2006 at 10:51 amTP should post the high school pics of Bush as a male cheerleader, which show him as extremely fem not masculine!
October 19th, 2006 at 10:53 amEveryone there are NEW TP threads above this one.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:57 amI’ll amend my last post:
I said But no one really takes the time to look at the ‘why.’ , but that’s wrong.
Some people do. I’m one of them. jdf is one as well.
But there’s a reason it’s called the Mass Media. It’s for the masses. And the masses have an attention span of ten seconds unless it involves Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise. Then the masses sit there an analyze away at what could have cause Paris and Nicole to stop being friends. Why is Tom Cruise nuts?
But the masses don’t psycho analyze political advisors. Too much thinking is required. The masses don’t think. They follow.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:57 amHis mother also committed suicide. Seriously.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:01 amSorry TP but I’ve got to agree with many others here. Rove sounds just like me as a teenager but I turned out 180 degrees politically from him. Instead of turning nasty and evil from bullying and being a social outcast, I decided not to become like him, whereas he choose to become a bully. I expect TP to take the high road, and this definitely isn’t it.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:10 ami didn’t mean apologise to Rove, apologise to the readers in general for the post.. make it a temporary lack of judgement or something. look, i really don’t like Rove either, but his time must come when you have something real and current against him.
btw, why do we have to abandon this topic just because a new one is posted?
October 19th, 2006 at 11:18 amThis just in! Bill Gates was also a geek in high school. How’d that turn out for him? Seriously, this reflects poorly on us secular-progressives.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:19 amHe was my bitch in middle school. It was kind of like “piggy” in Animal Farm. I still prank call him and yell “bitch!” into the phone…Ah, the memories
October 19th, 2006 at 11:31 amI was/am a geek too, but I didn’t develop a inferiority complex. Geekiness is not much the point as is what it drove him to do. It’s the whole nature versus nurture argument. I’m not entirely sure why TP decided to jump on this, though, as it seems to be causing a lot of disagreement of its relevance among fellow progressives. Although, to be fair, TP didn’t write or investigate any of this. They are just linking to an article that does. Maybe they are just pointing out the absurdity of it?
October 19th, 2006 at 11:35 amI see only one redeeming value to this thread – it shows that progressives truly are compassionate and willing to criticize their own. Would such opposition to threads on neocon sites be demonstrated by neocon posts? I doubt it.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:36 amSounds like the first round of “Image Rehab” to me. One can never get too far ahead of future indictments.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:37 amYeah, it’s a pointless post/thread, but it’s still fun.
However I disagree about the geek thing. Geeks, while geeky, are generally nice people. I know geeks. Rove is no geek.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:41 am#47 PLC,
October 19th, 2006 at 11:42 amI’ll agree with you there and go one step further — how many neocons would even admit that they were geeks/nerds growing up? Their overinflated egos would never acknowledge such blasphemy. Humble is not in their vocabulary.
Yeah, this is a pointless post/thread, but it’s still fun.
However, I disagree about Rove being a geek. Geeks, while geeky, are generally nice people. I know geeks. Rove is no geek.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:43 amsorry about the double post
October 19th, 2006 at 11:45 am50 erichnh
Good point – I immediately thought of O’Reilly and his inflating his athletic prowess while in school.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:45 amThat is precisely why he is a classic case of arrested development stuck in the adolescent fantasy of world domination.
All “famous” world leaders share these traits in common; an neurotic (and in Rove’s case pathological) need to control others.
That’s why healthy, well adjusted people don’t get into politics and specifically, leadership positions.
Others are drawn by the easy money, but in Rove’s case, it’s a personal, but childish vendetta.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:57 amToo funny, once again resorting to personal attack in an attempt to drive voters from the Reps – why aren’t you putting forth any agenda – some sort of Contract with America? In 1994, Reps took control of Congress by taking advantage of the negative mood toward Dems AND providing a clear vision as an alternative. A negative mood alone isn’t sufficient, otherwise, Busby would be in Congress.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:01 pmI despise Rove for his smear politics, but add my opinion to those who feel that this post demeans TP more than it demeans Rove.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:10 pmI think it should be a requirement that politicians be physically attractive.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:27 pmIt helps minimize the psycho factor.
Really, when you think about it, politics is one of those areas where unnattractive people can get ahead. Science has already proved attractive people advance in their careers faster and higher than unnattractive people.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:29 pmWhat an incredibly goofy post, TP. A lot of guys grow up geeky and unsmooth with the ladies (myself included…and I’m not exactly Casanova right now, either). Does that mean all of them are wrong, too? Is Rove wrong because he grew up dorky, or is he wrong because he smears, lies, and slimes people for a destructive and elitist cause?
What’s next, TP…Dennis Hastert should go because of how “fatty-fat-fat” he is? This is without a doubt the dumbest post TP has ever churned out.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:37 pmJason+M.+Hendler:
Read most of the comments here: we don’t like this type of personal attack. It’s pointless and stupid.
But you saw your opening, and took your shot.
You proved my point I made in #37.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:37 pmTP just lost me with this post. Totally.
Where do you think you guys are, in high school? This is incredibly stupid.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:39 pmTraitor Rove may have been too geeky in high school, but now he is too fat and too ugly and too mean to have any real friends. Yuk… Rove is exactly the kind of person one would want to avoid getting too close to.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:41 pmIrrelevant. We all know he looks like a bald hobbit. So what? It’s what he DOES and SAYS that disgusts the world. Who cares what he looks like?
October 19th, 2006 at 12:42 pmTP gets more petty the closer elections draw near… lame.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:50 pm…uh, you might continue this post by pointing out that little Karl plotted his revenge and got it in 2000 and again in 2004. are we proud that some weener who couldnt get laid has been mopping the floor with us for the past 6 years? beware the revenge of the nerds.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:53 pmThis thread is just plain stupid and pointless. There is enough real shit to nail Rove on, was it really necessary to demean us all with this drivel?
October 19th, 2006 at 12:54 pmA negative mood alone isn’t sufficient, otherwise, Busby would be in Congress.
Comment by Jason+M.+Hendler
Don’t count your Bilbray’s before Nov. 7. There’s a lawsuit to have him declared ineligible to serve, as he no longer actually lives in the district, and local news show are putting the race at a dead heat.
And ain’t it funny; the current polling shows the situation to be even more volatile that ‘94, yet the dems have elucidated no grand strategy like the Contract on America. Since everyone knows the first order of business will be to investigate the doings of the last Congress if the Dems win, we can take it as a voter mandate if we do win.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:59 pmRove was a dork,wow, big news. This should have been under Thinkfast where posting something as mundane as this would have qualified as thinking too fast. What’s up? Slow news day?
As well, all the armchair pyschoanalysis here isn’t worth a bags worth of toe nail clippings. You won’t get anything serious about Rove’s personality out of decades later gossip about what sounds like half of all boys high school life.
Posting such useless trash is the type of thing that makes partisan politics unappealing to anyone with a brain. This is what disgusts me about American democracy, that the conversation about our country is infected with complete non-issues. Rove isn’t even running for an office, even if this piece of drivel about him had merit, it still means nothing for the coming election. As if TP actually believes that this garbage gossip is somehow going to influence how anyone is going to vote.
How does it help? Let’s see. A TP advocate reading this tidbit then goes out and convinces an ignorant undecided voter that a guy in the Republican Party was a geek in high school and that now that guy influences the party’s candidates with his ancient geekiness, thus don’t vote for Republicans because they are infected with geekitus. Is that how it’s supposed to work?
The vast majority of independent or undecided voters don’t even know who Rove is. Many that do, only figure him to be a behind the scenes party operative. He really means nothing to most of those voters and they certainly aren’t going to make their voting decisions based on high school geekiness of someone they can’t even vote for or against.
I guess I’m becoming even mored jaded about poiltics then I’ve ever been based on stupid things like this. Is this what being left is about? I’m ashamed for TP and myself for thinking TP is worth getting valid information from and getting more upset the more I think about this as I write. It makes me wonder if other posts of TP are worth bothering to read or is the issue going to be merely high school gossip or whether what is posted isn’t colored with such partisan hate that truth isn’t important. This type of post is demeaning to the body of work done at TP and certainly exhibits a tone of hatred that endears no one who is an independent or undecided.
You know the Repugs talk about morality and then don’t follow through. Well the left is then about ethics and we don’t follow through. This isn’t even ethical to dredge up a long ago memory piece of useless gossip (it’s not like you’ve discovered he was a white supremist youth member or something that means anything) that isn’t even relevant to political issues.
It’s stuff like this that makes me want to throw up my hands and surrender to political apathy.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:17 pmLOL I have been away from this thread, and just came back for a moment > Rove uses this type of smear against GOP enemies, so TP is just showing how Rove himself operates! Then progressive posters start attacking TP and other posters for falling to Rove’s level of gutter smearing, but remember taking the high road against Republicans loses elections for Democrats every time > time to clobber the GOP with their own medicine and expose them all as sexually perverted weirdos!
October 19th, 2006 at 1:18 pmThe ugly dorks are fond of this thread…
October 19th, 2006 at 1:25 pmit only depends on how you look at the drivel. i do not find it demeaning, rather, an opportunity to understand; as members of the progressive community, is it not our duty to understand? anyone with the political prowess to create the system, or at the very least infect the system, as rove has, deserves to be understood. the man, regardless of our personal feelings towards him, created an incredibly powerful political machine, albeit, it looks to be short lived. nevertheless, to disregard what he has done, and simply file his actions under the “evil-geek” tab, would be a great disservice to our democracy. this is another instance when we must learn from the mistakes of our shared past. i think it’s safe to assume (yes i know what it does to u & me) that few, if any, of us here voted for the bush ticket in the last two elections, but our fellow citizens did and they did for a reason. rove presented an easily digestible formula to those with irritable brain, i mean bowel, syndrome. we as a community, have to find a way to create a message that is representative of our big tent (i’m not talking about parachute pants), and just as digestible. look, as bobcat stated above, there are the masses (read Ortega y Gasset’s “revolt of the…”). and said masses will most certainly remain part of the mass. it is psychologically more comfortable (at least for the masses) to remain within the mass. yet, we cannot simply write off the mass. perhaps a goal should be to elevate and thus individuate the mass rather than leave the mass in a system that cares little for it. we currently do nothing to protect the mass, and recent legislation and political thought does not suggest any change in sight. it is easier for politicians to feed sh** to the mass than oysters; to send the mass to its grave, rather than to a doctor; to deceive the mass rather than expect it to understand the facts. look at our homeless, look at the working class without insurance, look at an entire nation of children being deprived of an adequate education. i don’t have to preach to any of you about this, you are all aware of the commodification of the mass. in fact, if one is not part of the mass directly, one has relatives that are, and thus, we are each indirectly affected by the mass. the question is, what do we do about it.
now back to rove. he understood the way the mass functioned; i use past tense because his time, i believe, has come. he created a political machine that guaranteed the mass every product they wanted; for sh**t’s sake, he found a way to get the american worker to vote against their self interest! there is much to learn from rove, some of which may be beneficial. to understand how rove did what he did, one must understand the complex network of his life. though there are not always well-framed questions, there are always answers. How do we frame the question?
until the question is matched with its answer, we can ill afford to throw away any information that may be relevant to preventing this type of governmental abuse in our country again.
p.s. the “geek” factor has little to do with anything. what is important here is that rove was physically and emotionally castrated as a young man, and he appears to have developed a strong case of Nietzsche’s “resentement.”
October 19th, 2006 at 1:29 pmOn this site, this article serves to shine more light on rove’s “whatever it takes” shrewd, unethical behavior.
If the quotes are valid, then what’s the big deal?
I understand the argument that if “dems sink as low as the republicans then we’re no better,” but…there’s a difference in recognizing what HAS to be done to level the playing field, and in condoning torture of our war opponents. Stating what most likely is already known, plus reinforcing his weasely behavior is not sinking to a new low.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:46 pm#70…Your premise that Dems take the high road isn’t accurate, that’s the problem. The Dems have been losing elections by not taking stands on important issues such as Iraq. Dems became lazy and neglected their core voters and pushed aside the progressive base. Despite that, this country is essentially electorially evenly devided (the Repugs only have a slight majority at the Federal level) and taking each issue polling shows the Democratic ideas are almost always the more popular choice.
So your answer to that is to uselessly smear Rove with inane high school gossip that won’t sway a single voter. Wow! Great strategy! Let’s grovel at Rove’s level with nothing on him, that’s going to produce a sweep in 2006. Geez, no wonder the left is accused of having no ideas.
The Democratic Party machine became complacent in the past two decades and let the Republicans back into the game. It’s going to take real work to play on an even field again. Ideas, conviction, organizing, messaging, these are what matter. Not some finger pointing at the former high school geek Rove who isn’t running for a political office.
Taking the high road was not what lost elections for Dems, it was taking a long, winding, confusing road. Acting like an opposition party would be a step forward. Look how many Dems voted for
October 19th, 2006 at 1:49 pmBush’s torture bill. Even today, there is no united stand on Iraq from Dems. This has endlessly irked me since BEFORE the Iraq War.
This is a warning to all bullies in gradschool. The kid you are bullying might just grow up to be Karl Rove. To think, the assholes that bully people at school helped mold this madman. Then the bullies grow up to vote republican. Weird.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:54 pmjon > I just pointed out that Rove uses these tactics to win elections > he tells the GOP to smear Democrats and it works! I do agree with you that Democrats in DC act confused, and it never helps when some of them vote with the GOP on bills, like the one allowing torture! Democrats are also making a mistake by not unifying on removing all the troops from Iraq as a campaign plank! Actually I dislike having to OUT Republicans, but it works > Rep. Foley is blown to bits and Sen. Larry Craig has been exposed as a sexual hypocrite too!
October 19th, 2006 at 2:01 pm#72… This idea that Rove is some kind of political evil genius is fun for idle chat, but won’t win elections.
I don’t even buy that he’s a genius. He did AGREE to a strategy with the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority, etc. to get out the vote (and get out their wallets) of evangelicals which enabled the Republicans to gain enough votes to win national elections. But that was really borrowed from Reagan.
They spice up their speeches with coded religious language and viola’, they have the votes to win elections. And as we see from David Kuo’s book, Rove really doesn’t have much respect for the religious kooks.
It was essentially a house of cards arrangement. Eventually the religious right will become jaded with politics as the Repugs don’t really give them much anyway. But that does depend on the Dems becoming an opposition party and steadfastly declaring what they are for and sticking with it.
Until then, we may see a seesawing Rep/Dem/Rep/Dem jockeying for control for who knows how long.
October 19th, 2006 at 2:05 pm#76…Smear campaigns have existed since the beginnings of our two party system. They work here and there I’ll admit, but Dems smear just as much as Reps, that’s what TV political ads are all about. But some type of real mandate isn’t going to come about based on winning smear campaign elections. Further, being a geek in high school isn’t even a smear.
And again I point out, no one is going to be swayed in voting based on a non-smear campaign against a guy who isn’t even running for an office. Are you going to run commercials or something? Rove’s was a geek, Rove was a geek! Don’t vote for the party that has an ex-high school geek!
Sorry, nothing there to mine for a smear campaign.
October 19th, 2006 at 2:14 pmwow I think I read that Rove is a dork in the political journal DUH
October 19th, 2006 at 2:20 pmKind of explains why he is who he is. Still don’t feel sorry for the .
October 19th, 2006 at 2:25 pmjon > Rove is the GOP Director General of the smears against Democrats! Taking him down removes their brain-man! That is the only reason to smear Rove > to destroy him politically from doing any more harm! He is not an elected official, so NO commercials will be done about him directly > just those he is associated with like President Bush and GOP members of Congress! I never said calling Rove a geek will win the election!
October 19th, 2006 at 2:29 pmI’m not so sure that this article is the waste of time. Sometimes It’s important to see the factors that go into into one’s life, whether the outcome is more positive or not so positive. Indeed, I can see times in my own high school experiences which helped to shape the political activism that I do today.
But the response posed by just john — “Sounds like me! So, why didn’t I turn out to be evil?” — leads one to wonder, why don’t certain identical factors lead different people to pursue different life paths? It’s certainly a question to explore, especially if it’s a position where someone like a Karl Rove can influence decisions that influence lots of people, now and well in the future.
October 19th, 2006 at 3:52 pm#77
i do not recall even implying that rove is/was a genius. the word is much overused, and i rarely use it. further, it would never cross my mind to use it in reference to rove. however, he does have a particular political savvy that has led to the current political dominance (again in its last throws) of the republican party. it matters very little if he planned every detail. the fact remains that he has played a large part in coordinating the details, even if the particulars completely escaped him. when it comes to politics, the true thinkers are seldom elected, why else do we have a congress full of embeciles (there are exceptions) and a half-wit at best for president? none of these men are philosophers because most philosophers will not touch the slippery and oft compromised slope of political offices. yet, they do create policy and it is their policy that is frequently enacted. with that said, it matters little that rove merely “agreed” to terms with the ‘moral majority,’ or agreed to walk the line espoused by those in the conservative think tanks, the fact is that HE did it. now, whether the time was right and it was a fluke, or there was a well conceived and thorough plan behind it all makes little difference. the fact remains that we must learn from it and make damend sure our democracy is never threatened in this manner again. now, there may be nothing here to learn, but as a progressive, it is our duty to search. sitting on the laurels of the past is at the heart of being conservative, is it not? conversely, making sure the past is used in new and informative ways (think of the existentialist immanence/transcendence binary), that the past is always projected into the future is a duty of the progressive. it seems that we must learn from this, not pretend that it was a fluke; even if it was……
October 19th, 2006 at 4:34 pmSo ronrey… oh so ronrey
October 19th, 2006 at 5:17 pmIf KKKarl had every disadvantage, why did he not have his sorry ass drafted like me?
October 19th, 2006 at 7:02 pm#76 jay; Foley hoisted himself by his own petard. Serves him right, on committee to protect kid, pushed legislation to protect kids from Internet predators, and got caught in his own net. poetic justice.
October 19th, 2006 at 7:24 pmLow and pointless blow. A rare misfire for you guys.
October 20th, 2006 at 2:43 amAlso, to all those who say that this post was meant for us to understand Rove- bullshit. If that was the case, TP could post regularly on his history, which is actually pretty interesting: obession with history (particularly TR), first meeting of Dubya, etc. But no. All we get is this totally pointless smear job.
October 20th, 2006 at 2:45 amAnd not to mention ugly as sin, bless his little heart… and I do mean little.
October 20th, 2006 at 2:55 amFor all you people complaining about how a low blow this is:
Here’s a personal attack just for you: your cowards.
Know thy enemy. That’s it! Don’t give any haughty attitudes when we are fighting Rove, a psychopathic murderer. I think your pretty discusting. Can’t even handle a little background information. Trying to claim it’s more than that.
I’m sure Rummy is was the same way, if you’ve seen old footage of him. There is a trend that this article proves, just like Rove, Rummy, Bush, they where complete nerds and perhaps that gave them the vengeful and power-hungry attitudes they now have sitting in powerful positions which makes them Psychopathic today! You see, once they where powerless nerds in society, looked down apon, because of that lack of control in their own life, they willfully achived power to create legistation to control all of your lives, and demand war and continued killing of the youth without conscience.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:28 pm