I don't have much of interest to say about Rove leaving (which is why I'm writing this post about it!) other than when I was drinking my coffee and skimming articles on Salon this morning I thought for multiple minutes that their Rove piece was some kind of unfunny parody article, which was a really odd epistemological state to be in ...

Anyway here's some random thoughts ... First of all it doesn't seem likely that Rove is being pushed out for a couple of reasons:

• It's pretty clear that as much as the Democrats love this summer's long-running miniseries Everybody Hates Alberto they're not really interested in going after anyone. It is now, you know, mid-August of 2007 ... the attorney firing story came to the media's attention when?
  
  Basically I hate to break it to the Dem blogs but the Gonzales story ended when the Democrats rolled over on the NSA wiretapping bill. The visit to Ashcroft's hospital bed was the angle through which someone could have been nailed -- not for any pedantic legal reason but because that story was so goddam nutty that it made good copy and would have made good TV. However they can't possibly play that card now without looking ridiculous -- most Democrats just voted in favor of what John fucking Ashcroft was supposedly making a principled stand against



• Even if there is something brewing with Rove's involvement in the attorney firings and other scandals du jour does it really make any difference at this point if he's in the administration or out of it? In fact if he still worked for the White House it seems like it would be easier to cite executive privilege.

But I haven't really been following the Gonzales stuff lately so take my gut feelings with a grain of salt. I must, say, though, Rove doesn't seem like the quitting type -- he probably just wants to go work on some Republican's campaign full time in an attempt to regain his lost mojo, which is great news for the Democrats.

Speaking of which, I thought this Think Progress post titled "Media Gushes Over Rove: ‘Superstar,’ ‘Boy Genius,’ ‘The Mastermind Behind Everything’" was amusing; that is, I'm all for calling attention to the fact that Karl Rove actually did a rather poor job as a political strategist given the raw materials that he had at his disposal, (i.e. "He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency." to quote Andrew Sullivan) and I'm all for complaining about the fact that the media always depicts Rove as the greatest genius since Archimedes, but I'd like to point out to Think Progress et. al. that, you know, liberal blogs just very irritatingly spent about seven years buttressing up Rove's genius-boy reputation so maybe it's a little disingenuous to be shocked and dismayed about the media doing it now. For example, when I wrote the following in April of 2006,

Via Cursor, I saw this post by Philo in which he says that he has "a sinking feeling" the Republicans will win in November because of the evil genius of their nihilistic strategy in which words are never connected to reality -- now that Karl Rove is focused solely on politics again, etc.

In my opinion Philo's sinking feeling might well be accurate but, you know, I'm sorry but this whole Karl Rove as Mephistopheles routine is getting a little bit stale. It reminds me of the recent little commented upon report that the US military has been, surprise, surprise, purposely overplaying Zarqawi's significance in Iraq: at this point, if Karl Rove didn't exist the Democrats would have to invent him.

, it sure as hell wasn't out of annoyance that the mainstream media was making pre-emptive excuses for a Democratic loss because Karl Rove is a genius...

Also, I don't really know how to work this into the above but did anyone else see the footage of the press conference today in which Rove's resignation was announced and catch that bit at the end in which some loud-mouthed journalist (apparently CBS's Bill Plante) yells out, "If he's so smart, how come you lost Congress?" Good times, good times -- that almost made me do a spit-take...

Labels: Karl Rove