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Friday, July 15, 20051121443500
Karl Rove and Bloggers Stand Up to Joe Wilson's Coup
Mark Safranski on how Joe Wilson and the MSM failed in their political "coup":
Karl Rove is a brilliant bare-knuckle political operator and no saint but the likeliest legal outcome of this charade is that he did not, at least technically speaking, break the law by " outing" a CIA clandestine officer engaged in covert operations, which Ms. Plame was not in any event. Given the unlikelihood of Judith Miller doing hard time for Mr. Rove, he's obviously not " the" source, though I can imagine he walked right up to any legal line in speaking to reporters. That's how hardball is played in Washington and hardball is what the incredibly arrogant Joseph Wilson chose to play when the senior staff at Foggy Bottom and at Langely cooked up this gambit in order to torpedo the President's foreign policy and, if they were really lucky, the President along with it.
In some countries, when the unelected insiders engage in secret machinations to oust their elected leaders it is called a coup.
Too strong a word ? Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Left's favorite CIA director and no fan of the Bush administration, felt compelled to speak out in support of housecleaning at Langely:
"The CIA has got to be kept out of partisan politics," said Stansfield Turner, who was CIA director under President Carter. "And it appears that they were leaking information to influence the election. Porter Goss has now got a difficult problem."
The coup failed because the old oligopoly on public discourse of three major TV networks and two newspapers is broken. Would-be drumbeats orchestrated by elite powerbrokers through their media friends now dissolve into a cacophony of fact-checking, fisking, ridicule and a devastating counterattack if any chicanery is exposed. Chicanery that once would never have been detected, much less thwarted.
Thank you, Karl Rove. And thank you, new media.
11:05 Posted by Dan tdaxp (Webmaster) in Blogosphere, Democrats, Media | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: karl rove, wilson, joe wilson, plamegate
Comments
And thank you Dan for the link.
I don't blame the Dems for being so fired up to " get " Rove that its affecting their perceptions of reality.
First, they haven't had any kind of a " win" on any issue of significance in years. Secondly, they have mythologized Rove into an evil genius puppeteer with almost magical political powers who they think they can " kill" and then render Bush helpless.
I have news for them. Bush would be pained to lose Rove but the former made the latter, not the other way around. Bush has enough smarts - and certainly the leverage - to pick a number of other very talented political operators. Eisenhower made do without Sherman Adams, Carter without Bert Lance, Reagan without Deaver, Clinton without Stephanopolous - Bush would move on without Karl Rove.
But he doesn't need to ;o)
Posted by: mark safranski | Friday, July 15, 2005
Mark,
We have to stop agreeing so much. It's more duplication of effort than the blogosphere can take ;)
Chris Bowers of MyDD had a very good post about the possibilities and limitations of "getting Rove" for the Democrat side of the aisle
"At long last, we seem to have been able to make the MSM stand up, take notice, and help cause a Bush scandal to stick. This was the top news story of the week, and it actually increased in intensity with each passing day. This is the sort of victory Republicans achieved in the 2004 campaign with the Swift Boat Liars: inexorably tarnishing Kerry no matter the facts of the case.
However, we have to recognize that this sort of victory will only yield intangible benefits, at least for now. If actual indictments are handed down later this year, the situation might be different, but without the specter of congressional hearings, we are going to have a difficult time indefinitely prolonging the free media coverage. Ultimately, victory in Rove is going to mean that we can more effectively, frequently, and forcefully refer to a "Republican culture of corruption." With DeLay still in hot water, with Coin-gate still very much in play, with Republican congressman retiring under clouds of suspiciion, and with seemingly the entire Bush administration lawyering up, Rove is the piece de resistance that will allow this frame to stick and deeper penetrate the national political consciousness.
...
It is for this reason that I completely agree with Armando--we must resist being caught up in the minutae and legalese of the Rove case. Not only is that out of our hands, it takes our eyes off the prize. Our goal--the prize--it to make Republicans look corrupt, not to engage in some Quixotic attempt to finish off Rove without the aid of a prosecutor. Whether or not what Rove did was illegal--it was--it clearly was a reckless disregard for national security and basic decency that is part of a broader Republican culture of corruption extending from Karl Rove's office in the White House to Tom DeLay's office on the Hill. Hammering that point home is our victory, because right now everything else is out of our hands."
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/7/15/11723/0094
Chris Bowers (who worked with both the net-centric politics of Howard Dean campaign and the netpolitics of DailyKos) and MyDD is like if the German generals kept a group blog during WWII: blitzkrieg.de.
There are foolish and idiotic lefty-dove blogs. But MyDD is not one of them. Chris Bowers, the lefty dove, knows better ;)
Posted by: Dan | Friday, July 15, 2005