Rove's Brain

Republicans are doing all they can to discourage former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from becoming a presidential candidate in 2016 by attacking all things Hillary.  They fear that she would easily roll over any Republican candidate and generate many congressional victories in her wake.  

Secretary Clinton says that she will decide by the end of the year whether she will run for president.  But, given the fact that she is already the overwhelming favorite to win her party's nomination, she has been the target of political attacks from the right.  The most recent assault comes from Republican strategist Karl Rove, who, speaking at a closed-door corporate event in southern California on May 8, raised questions about her health.  The New York Post reported earlier this week that Rove said,  “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears,she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”

These comments from this master of dirty tricks and misinformation were no accident.  Rove's intentions are to raise doubts among voters about Secretary Clinton's health, and to get cable pundits to talk endlessly about the issue.  By being disruptive and dishonest he wins the admiration of many in the Republican party, even despite his recent poor performance.  For instance, Rove's political action committees spent more than $300 million on the 2012 election cycle and failed.  In response, Donald Trump, real estate mogul and occasional Republican presidential aspirant, was sharply critical of Rove. “When you spend $400 million and it’s a failure and you don’t have one victory, you know something is seriously, seriously wrong,” he said last spring.

But Rove can live with the criticism, and he is being well-paid to do so.  Rove was a longtime adviser to President George W. Bush, and he helped shape the administration's case to the American public for waging war on Iraq.  Of course, the Bush administration misled the world into believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  Also, Rove was questioned regarding his role in leaking covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 as retaliation for criticism by her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, of the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war. 

Rove made quite a name for himself from his tactic of attacking an opponent's strength.   In 2004, then Senator John Kerry was nominated by his party to run for president against the incumbent President Bush.  Kerry was seen as a Vietnam War hero, while Bush had pulled strings to avoid fighting on the front lines in that war.   Texas journalist Wayne Slater said, in a PBS Frontline interview, "The number one thing that John Kerry offered was his heroic service in Vietnam …and so what Rove did was attack the strength of Kerry, not his weakness."  Rove's tactic led to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth negative campaign against Kerry's claims of heroism.  The campaign was discredited, but Bush won reelection.  

Karl Rove is a protegee of the late and legendary Republican dirty trickster, Lee Atwater.  Rove was first investigated by the Republican National Committee in 1973 for allegedly teaching seminars on dirty tricks to young Republicans, but he was cleared of wrong-doing.  And George W. Bush biographer  Louis DuBose says Rove was behind a whisper campaign about then Texas Governor  Ann Richard's "sexual orientation."  DuBose wrote, "No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove.  Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it."

But all of this is okay in politics, where operatives are not penalized by the public for lying about an opponent, and they are not financially penalized by a candidate for losing an election.   Karl Rove spent  and wasted an enormous amount of fundraising money in 2012.  In fact, he was so concerned about upsetting his donors election night that he went into a meltdown on Fox News when the network declared Ohio for Obama.  Rove insisted their declaration was "premature."  Of course, Ohio did go to President Obama, and its delegates put him over the top in his reelection bid.  

Over the past few months, Rove and other Republican operatives have been building up their war chests for the 2014 midterm and 2016 presidential elections.  And congressional Republicans have focused their attention on the terrorist attack at Benghazi, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.   

If she runs for president, Secretary Clinton will showcase her experience at State as a strength.  But Republicans are now on the attack.  Despite the findings of a rigorous bipartisan report, which did not blame Secretary Clinton, several congressional hearings, and the 25,000 pages of relevant documents that have been turned over by the administration, Republicans have now begun a select committee investigation.  Meanwhile, GOP congressmen have turned up the volume on their attacks of Secretary Clinton.  They have accused her of mismanagement, incompetence and a coverup.    

On Thursday, a Quinnipiac poll of registered voters in Ohio found that Secretary Clinton's commanding lead over each of her possible Republican opponents is narrowing.  This may be, in part, the result of all of the Benghazi attacks.  The poll was taken well before this week's "brain-ghazi" attack by Karl Rove.  

You would think America was in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign.  Thankfully, former President Bill Clinton responded to Rove's charge with humor.  "First they said she faked her concussion and now they say she is auditioning for her part on the Walking Dead," President Clinton told a gathering in New York.   "If she does (have brain damage), I must be in really tough shape because she is still quicker than I am."

Senator Paul on the Attack

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the overwhelming front-runner to be her party's standard-bearer in the 2016 Presidential Election, and the Republicans know it.  Even though she has not announced her intentions, Republicans are already taking political shots at her.  But their personal attacks are shrill and feeble, and reveal a party without a vision for the country.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll shows former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead among likely Democratic presidential candidates.  The former First Lady has been in the national spotlight for more than two decades.  In that time she has been a formidable political presence on the national stage, and has displayed tremendous energy and resilience.  Secretary Clinton enjoys great affection and respect from her loyalists, and endures immense disdain from her detractors.   While she is a polarizing figure, her overall personal favorability ratings are very high.  And her great political skills will make her a strong presidential candidate, should she decide to run.

Republicans fear a Clinton candidacy, in part because they do not have a clear front-runner for their party's nomination.  And nearly half the Americans polled in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.  Nonetheless, potential GOP candidates are already jockeying for position in the nomination race.

None has been more outspoken than Tea Party favorite Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).  And Senator Rand Paul has focused his most recent attacks on Secretary Clinton.  Paul pushed back on the charges that Republicans are engaged in a "war on women." "The Democrats can't say, 'We're the great defenders of women's rights in the workplace'...when the leader of their party, the leading fundraiser in the country, is Bill Clinton, who was a perpetrator of that kind of sexual harassment," Paul told C-Span, referring to the Monica Lewinsky affair.  He continued, "Someone who takes advantage of a young girl in their office?  I mean, really.  And then have the gall to stand up and say, 'Republicans are having a war on women?'"  He concluded, "Now, that's not Hillary's fault...but it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton is history."

Senator Paul's comments got a lot of attention, no doubt as he had hoped.  It was clearly an effort to dredge up old headlines about the Clinton-era dramas in the White House.   His attack received support from GOP party boss Reince Priebus, who told MSNBC that "everything is on the table."  Priebus explained, "I think we're going to have a truckload of opposition research on Hillary Clinton, and some things may be old, and some things may be new.  But I think everything is at stake when you're talking about the leader of the free world."

Priebus is the man who commissioned an autopsy of the Republican failure to win the White House in 2012.  In announcing the results last year, he said, "The way we communicate our principles isn't resonating widely enough...focus groups described our party as 'narrow-minded,' 'out of touch,' and 'stuffy old men.'"  Well, Mr. Priebus?

But not all Republicans think that Senator Paul's approach is the way to win the White House.  Republican strategist Karl Rove told Fox News, "This can't be 'I want to run for president'-It's got to be about something bigger than that, and frankly Rand Paul spending a lot of time talking about the mistakes of Bill Clinton does not look like a big agenda for the country."  He added, "I'm not certain again that beating up on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky is a particularly good thing to strengthen your skills for the 2016 contest."

Former Republican congressman and current MSNBC television host Joe Scarborough told his audience he'd “never bring that stuff up in a gazillion years.”  But he did pivot, saying that if Secretary Clinton attacks Republicans as anti-women it's fair game.  “Does this not compromise Hillary Clinton’s ability to bash Republicans as being terrible towards women," he said.

Perhaps that is the ultimate Republican strategy.  But it risks energizing Clinton supporters, alienating independent and women voters, and reinforcing the negative perceptions of the party as "out of touch." 

Stop Whining, Republicans

President Barack Obama handily won a second term largely because he ran a superior campaign. Republicans expected a late Reagan-esque surge to propel Mitt Romney to victory. This made Tuesday's defeat an even more crushing blow.

As Romney was conceding defeat, already indignant Republicans were pointing fingers and assessing blame. They were intensely angry, overwrought, and consumed with personal animus for the president. Highly paid Republican consultants cried foul. After all, consultants must protect their reputation and future income.

Republican strategist Mary Matalin blew a fuse and personally attacked President Obama in an article for the conservative National Review. "What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform," Matalin wrote. "Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division."

Her hate and bitterness toward the president oozed through every word. To call him a sociopath is to call him a person whose behavior is, "often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." Outrageous.

Perhaps Matalin suffers from a case of Romnesia because the Republican primary was filled with negative and personal attacks on Romney. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich even called the governor a "liar" on CBS. All the Obama campaign had to do was repeat the attacks on Romney from fellow Republican candidates earlier in the year.

For Instance, last year Texas Gov. Rick Perry told the National Journal, "There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business, and I happen to think that's indefensible." Gingrich told Mediate last December, "If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years, then I would be glad to then listen to him." And last March Rick Santorum told CBS This Morning, "He doesn't have a core... He's been on both sides of almost every single issue in the past 10 years."

But when it comes to mendacity, Gov. Mitt Romney set the standard. Apart from the constant flip-flopping on issues, Romney regularly leveled dishonest attacks against the president throughout the campaign. The worst lie, which probably cost him a win in Ohio, was the false ad about Jeep moving its operations to China.

Matalin's vituperation was not the least of the GOP blowback to President Obama's reelection. Donald Trump's Twitter response was emphatic: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty... Let's fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us." The aging rocker Ted Nugent tweeted, "Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav (sic) a president to destroy America... Goodluk (sic) America u just voted for economic & spiritual suicide. Soulless fools."

Tuesday's biggest loser, Republican strategist Karl Rove, who spent $365 million of donor money trying to defeat the president, had the best excuse. He actually accused the Democratic and African American president of interfering with the election. "He succeeded by suppressing the vote, by saying to people, 'you may not like who I am, and I know you can't bring yourself to vote for me, but I'm going to paint this other guy as simply a rich guy who only cares about himself," Rove told Fox News Thursday.

But the most disturbing reaction to the president's reelection may have come from Peter Morrison, the Hardin County Texas Republican Party Treasurer. "We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity," he wrote on his Facebook site. "But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity." That "opportunity" is secession, "Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way in peace."

Everybody hates to lose. Yes, the Republican party went though a brutally divisive primary that nominated Mitt Romney. Yes, Romney was gaining momentum, while President Obama remained vulnerable because of a weak economic recovery. But somewhere along the line Republicans lost touch with reality. Their expectations blew way out of proportion. And suddenly their balloon popped on election night.

President Obama's resounding victory has exposed a core problem within the Republican Party: It is filled with anger and hatred brought on by an identity crisis. Republican leaders will be meeting over the next few weeks and months to determine what went wrong this election and what can be done to fix the problem.

Perhaps a great first step would be to stop the whining and the ridiculous personal attacks. Tantrums and snit fits will not win over any converts. Nobody likes a sore loser.

Be Bold Mr. President

The din of Democracy, which ebbs and flows according to election cycles, has calmed as most Americans now focus on their normal lives. They had witnessed a historic amount of campaign spending, about $6 billion, more than one million political ads, and seemingly endless news coverage. After all the shouting was over, and the ballots were counted, the political balance of power did not change in Washington.

Yet one could conclude that the 2012 presidential election had two outcomes. President Obama was given a second chance to fix entitlements, tax policy, the economy, deficits and immigration. The American people empowered the president to stand up to the extremes of both parties, if necessary, to come up with reasonable and balanced solutions to these daunting problems. The Tea Party wing of the Republican Party was knocked back on its heels.  So it is time for the president to be bold and use an "all hands on deck" approach in order to galvanize Congressional support around solutions. The president should also be transparent with the American people, in effect, "crowdsource" ideas, and include them in the process.

President Obama has a small window in which to act before the midterm campaign begins. He should first start building momentum by working out a balanced solution to the so-called fiscal cliff. Congress must have a budget agreement by the end of the year or the Bush tax reductions will expire and deep cuts will be made to the defense budget. It is time for a grand bargain, a compromise, that includes budget cuts AND some revenues.

Meanwhile, for Republicans, it is mourning in America. The party of Lincoln failed to recognize that the country is a melting pot with diverse voices and evolving needs. Instead, the GOP is hanging on to a Norman Rockwell vision of America.  Republican members of Congress have been unwilling to budge on tax increases for the wealthy because they fear of losing the Tea Party's support.

Now Republicans have a chance to show all Americans that they are willing to compromise.  Reaching an agreement on the fiscal cliff will be an important first step for them to reach out to all segments of the population. Republican House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday, "I think the members understand that the fiscal cliff... is unacceptable."  And earlier this week he said, "The issue here is the president wants revenue. I'm willing to put revenue on the table."  But the speaker will not agree to rate hikes for high-income earners, rather just closing loopholes and eliminating deductions.  The Democrats don't agree with his approach.

If the president and Congress do not make a deal on the fiscal cliff by the end of the year, the U.S. economy will likely spiral into another recession. With so much at stake, the stock market has been sharply lower out of concern for what Washington will do. A solution requires compromise from both parties, and compromise will send a strong message to all Americans that both parties agree their country comes first.

One final note, President Obama received 9 million fewer votes than he did in 2008, while Mitt Romney received about 2 million fewer votes than Senator John McCain did when President Obama defeated him. It is likely they were turned off by the negative campaigns waged by both candidates, their misleading claims, and the sheer magnitude of the political advertising.

Among the losers this election year were billionaires David and Charles Koch, and Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate. They spent millions of dollars trying to defeat the president and failed.

Perhaps the biggest loser was Fox News contributor and GOP strategist Karl Rove.  His political groups, American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS, spent about $325 million of other people's money trying to elect Romney and other Republicans to office with little success. He also had an embarrassing meltdown on television when Fox News called Ohio for the president.

Rove was unapologetic about his dismal campaign results, explaining in a conference call to donors Thursday, according to one press report, that the Republican losses would have been bigger without him. No doubt his financial supporters believe him.

And no doubt Rove is laughing all the way to the bank.