Karl Rove: How liberals lost their groove
By Miguel Guanipa (08/28/06)
Karl Rove is a name that strikes terror in the hearts of most liberals, and for good reason.
The man who was arguably central to the engineering of both victories for president George W. Bush has become somewhat of a mythical figure in both republican and democratic circles. But as far as Karl Rove himself is concerned, he has merely set foot on the threshold of what is to become a radical realignment of the political landscape in this country for many years to come.
The reason why liberals fear and loathe what they often portray as his “Machiavellian Designs” is because they are on the receding end of what Karl Rove sees as his master plan. In no small part this is a self-inflicted wound; and one that could result in a severe crippling of the party that most identifies itself with the liberal ideology, namely the Democratic Party. For Rove it is the joyous sound of a not too distant summons for the liberal ideology’s protracted demise, which has been long overdue.
One could argue that at the heart of Karl Rove’s strategy is the not so dubious premise that Americans are driven to choose their representatives on the basis of what may be defined as a mixture of emotion, popular wisdom and pure self-preservation. It is the emotion equation on which the Democrats have spent most of their political capital, to their own detriment. For Rove this is only one of the manifold building blocks, which support his disarmingly simple scheme.
The popular wisdom block represents that region of the American psyche, which views the quintessential liberal mindset as one that blindly supports the intrusive tendencies of a bloated government, the corrosive effects of an unfettered individual liberty that is sanctioned at the expense of moral uprightness, and the role appeasement measures and therapeutic trends play in the weakening of patriotic virility during a time of national crisis.
In less refined colloquialisms, today’s liberals have come to be perceived as utterly dependent, morally permissive, gutless pansies; and while this perception has been cementing, Rove and his political operatives have not failed to capitalize on it for their own advantage.
As far a the self-preservation building block in this grand design which
prompts even fairly moderate voters to be energized, Rove appeals to the
“ownership society” rhythm of the president’s domestic policy drumbeat;
what James Madison referred to as the “distinct interests …(that)… grow up
of necessity in civilized society”.
What Madison (one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, of which Rove
professes to be an avid reader) meant by ‘distinct interests” is
essentially the concept of how personal property ownership (or the lack
thereof for that matter) significantly affects the instinctual
self-governing sentiments of the electorate, and how minimal legislative
intrusion of these contrasting interests as well as aggressively ensuring
favorable conditions and opportunities for all to compete represent the
primary task of government. This concept is also formally scripted in the
declaration of independence as the “pursuit of happiness”.
This elementary invocation of unsophisticated American pragmatism embodied in notions of liberty and self-sufficiency that is at the core of Karl Rove’s strategy is what appears to trip democrats so often. For them this is simply camouflage for a more sinister plan to obliterate an already beleaguered liberal constituency and ensure a republican majority at the expense of stifling the spirit of bipartisanship; But Rove sees things in a slightly different light.
It is nothing less than the shaping of history itself, albeit through a conservative majority, that Karl Rove envisions for the Republican Party; this is to be effectuated by what he once called the president’s goal of “the triumph of freedom and the end of tyranny in our world”. A lofty vision indeed, but one that is vastly more inspiring than that which the Democratic Party has been presumably in search of for the last few decades.
Moreover, a vision that will echo in posterity if successfully accomplished; something that Karl Rove - who once allegedly quipped that “History is written by the winners” - is well aware of.
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