Karl Rove IS Politics, Apparently

Something strange has happened to Democrats in the past 8 years. They have come to associate all politics and political maneuvering with Karl Rove. It may be that in view of the stubborn refusal of the Democratic Party to take any action, at all, against the Bush regime for the first 7 years, rank-and-file Democrats have begun to believe that the natural state of politics is supposed to be inaction. Thus, when the GOP makes a decisive move of any kind, Democrats are confused and panicked. "What does this mean?" they cry.

Incredibly, one thing it apparently means is that many Democrats have come to associate all political strategies and tactics (and there is a difference!) with Rovian dirty tricks.

On several left-leaning blogs, including AmericaBlog and Democratic Underground, almost every piece of news about the presidential race and politics in general has been met with postings along the lines of "Oh Noes You Guys! This is ROVE!" "OMFG! The Debates are a Rovian Trap!!!" "The Bailout is Totes a Trap for Democrats!" and the like.

If it please the audience, allow me humbly to suggest that people who react this way to simple politicking are, as Rousseau said, fucked in the head. Maybe by Karl Rove. I don't know. But some of us have reached a point where, when the House of Representatives debates a bill and then follows a known procedure during the vote, and Republicans happen to decide they won't vote for the bill --again, while following parliamentary procedures that have been used in the past to scuttle other legislation-- ordinary citizens who happen to follow the Democratic Party start screaming "Get away! It's a Rovian trap!!" Excuse me. No it isn't. It's a vote on a bill before Congress. And voting involves an amount of intrigue and political jockeying.

I guess what I'm saying is, subterfuge, secrecy, and the double-cross existed in politics long before Karl Rove. Moreover, to say that high-level strategy during a congressional debate is "Rovian" is a misnomer: Karl Rove is the guy who puts a leaflet under your windshield wiper that calls Obama a "nigger" who wants to sleep with your white, teenage daughter. He's not the guy with the big ideas, subtle schemes, or master plans. Look at his product, again, everybody: GW Bush is not subtle. He's not masterful. He's not opaque, or mysterious, or even all that complicated to figure out. That is the dreaded Rovian operation at its peak?

The bigger problem for my fellow Democrats is that they have lost the faith in language and reason. No wonder: I saw some McCain surrogates on TV yesterday and they were trying to say that sure, voters may think Obama is doing better than McCain, but he isn't. Think about that a minute. Then, McCain himself came on TV to say that voters who ask questions of the candidates are sleazy, "gotcha" punks. This just a day after McCain said that Sarah Palin's public statements, which she made voluntarily and openly, at her choosing, were actually a fabrication and "meant nothing."

But, of course, words do have meaning. Logic is powerful still. Reality does exist (and with the way the market is sliding, it's getting a whole lot realer all the time!). And for these reasons, other citizens and Democrats need to let go of this childish persecution fantasy they have that Karl Rove's tactics are politics at present.

Because, once you cross that line, and come to believe that everything is a conspiracy against your interests at this moment, you have lost the key, which is that everything, even the failed bailout bill, can be dissected, motives can be discerned, sense can be made. And, when you come to the bottom of it, you will end up with the weapons in hand to strike the Republicans: in this case, they scuttled the bailout bill because they do not like John McCain and because, according to their congressional leader, Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings. Those two facts should be being used right now to pummel Republicans into submission. Force the infantile conservatives in Congress to grow the fuck up.

Instead, my fellow Democrats are tying themselves into knots with invented quandaries like "Rove wants us to vote for the bill, so the GOP can take credit for helping the average American...but many Americans support this bill, but also hate George W. Bush, who supports the bill...but we supported the bill...and McCain promised to fix the crisis...URG! Does. Not. Compute....Oh Noes! It must be a Rovian trap, y'alls!! OMFG!!"

Or how about Sarah Palin? She speaks at the GOP convention and proves she can read off a teleprompter (and, go back and watch that speech, if you can stand to. It wasn't as good as the McCain people claim, not by a long shot). Then, she disappears from view for two weeks. A series of beyond-disastrous TV interviews basically make her a generational punchline (my kids will want to hear me do impressions of her twenty years from now. Bet on it.). Then she hides some more. Then, she brings her dad (McCain) to the PTA meeting with Principal Couric, where he seizes the floor and complains that all the other kids are picking on his little Sarah. Words like "embarrassing" come to mind. "Pathetic." "Whiners." "Inappropriate." "Crazy."

But to my fellow Democrats, all they see is one word: "Rove." "Biden is walking into a classic GOP Rovian trap!! No matter what he says, he is going to be seen as beating up on Palin!"

If that were true, then it would mean several things. 1. The Democrats in the campaign utterly fucked up the post-debate discussion and allowed it to spiral into surrealist nonsense-land. 2. The media thinks women are weak, defenseless creatures who need champions. 3. The GOP thinks women are weak, defenseless creatures who need champions. 4. Everyone thinks the American public is stupid. I reject ALL of these possibilities. Every Democrat should, too.

This election and the current financial crisis have nothing to do with Karl Rove. He is now a semi-cogent opinion columnist for the Wall Street Journal, soon to be just the "Journal" after Wall Street disappears.

Politics is a game of moving parts and shifting tactics -- we, as a party, seem to have forgotten this fact, and instead fixated on the most puerile tactician alive as not only indicative of all political maneuvering, but as the manager of it as well. This is asinine. We must get back to using reason to knock the stool out from under the Republicans, not vague assertions of "traps," double- and triple-crosses, and secret conspiracy cabals. Shit, I have friends who couldn't even follow the plot of "The Usual Suspects." Now Democrats are gonna try to tell me that the public is buying into some super-elaborate "gotcha" plan by Karl fucking Rove? To that I say, "Don't believe it! It's a trap!!1!11!"