Of course, you assume Rove did this. You don't know that, and he denies it. Nevertheless, I wasn't referring to what the politicians did or cared about. I was referring to what Republican activists and primary voters did and cared about. I never heard one mention the alleged "love child." Keep in mind that the media made a drastically bigger deal out of that than it actually was (because it reinforces a political narrative they like). It was a push poll question and on some fliers. 98 percent of South Carolina voters probably never saw or heard about any of it, and keep in mind that McCain got his *** kicked in South Carolina. It's not as if it was a close call in which one poll question that virtually nobody heard or flyer that virtually nobody saw was going to be decisive.
So what did the voters and activists I heard from say about McCain that they didn't like? That he bashed and distanced himself conservatives (whom he had previously eulogized and exploited back when he a was a political nobody). Well, doing that in a Republican primary is like walking into a Democratic primary and calling black voters "stupid, lazy n-bombs" and referring to gays as "perverted queers." It's bashing the people who will decide the outcome of your election. It's a stupid-*** thing to do.
If that's true, then why did he do a bunch of "bipartisany" stuff? Why pass a tax cut that got 12 Democratic votes in the Senate? Why have Ted Kennedy and George Miller carry his education bill, which got huge numbers of Democratic votes? Why lead the Iraq War, for which more Democrats voted in favor than in opposition? Why pass Medicare Part D, which was a Democratic policy priority?
What you (and a lot of others) miss is that Rove (and the rest of these guys) was partisan in elections for the same reason that guys like David Axelrod was partisan in elections. He doesn't like to lose, and he's not a big candy-***. He'll defend himself and the Bushes when they're under attack and fight back hard. However, he wasn't partisan when it came to policy advocacy and legislative strategy, because he wasn't an ideological conservative. He's a political hack who latched onto the Bush family (which at the time had a lot more in common with the Rockefeller wing of the GOP than it did with the Goldwater/Reagan wing) and did so to promote himself. He didn't give a crap about policy.
I worked for two Texas state legislators before law school and during the height of Bush's governorship (1995 - 1999). They were staunch conservatives. Do you think they liked Karl Rove or didn't? They didn't. Why not? Because he generally advised Bush to associate with them as little as possible and not to care about their policy priorities. He wanted to associate with corporate, moderate Republicans and Democrats, because Rove already had his eye on the Presidency. This was before political strategists really understood how polarized the electorate was, so Rove wanted Bush to do things that would give him a broad appeal and make him look good even in states like California. He actually thought that was on the table in 2000. So you didn't hear about things like illegal immigration, substantial property tax reform, abortion (except on the most broadly favorable issues like parental notification), etc. You heard about education reform, children's health insurance, busting sex offenders, racial and ethnic tokenism, and other things that play well with soccer moms and moderates. Well, that was Rove's and Bush's whole rap as governor and as President. He governed as a center-Right guy who appealed to suburbanites.
Barry, I honestly think you're a decent guy, but it's like you had no political knowledge before about 2006. McCain is a compromiser on some issues (especially those prized by ideological conservatives), but he's not a compromiser on military strategy and foreign policy. Biden wouldn't have backed him down from the Iraq War for two reasons. First, though Biden is one of the more knowledgeable people on foreign policy, a few senators were significantly more so. One of those was McCain (another was Dick Lugar), so it's not likely that he'd defer to him. Second, Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War with Bush in charge. Where the hell were you in 2003? Have Democrats bashed the War so much that they've made you forget that most of them supported it?
Few have bashed Sarah Palin as much as I have (though she is hot for a politician), but she didn't inject anything into the GOP. She's too dumb and incompetent to do something like that. What drove her appeal was already there and on the rise. She is a symptom of something much bigger than she, not a cause. Having said that, I would have preferred Lieberman to be on the ticket. He was a very honorable guy, though that ticket still would have lost just as badly.
He did do an honorable thing, and I prefer that kind of politics, but unfortunately it's also naive. One of the big reasons why we got Trump is that for years, Democrats and stupid political pundits called Republicans who were decent family men (like the Bushes and Mitt Romney) Nazis, racists, haters, evil, and other things that were at least as bad as what this woman said about Obama. Did Democrats and media figures correct those people like McCain did? No, they nodded along. How many Democrats corrected Kanye West when he said Bush didn't care about black people? None. In fact, they loved Kanye back then. Eventually people got sick of the double standards and ******** and chose the flailing hammer looking for a nail. It's a bad thing, but I understand why it happened.
Last edited: Jun 15, 2018