Before Rove became a force in Texas politics the ground was being prepared by John Tower and George H. W. Bush. After them Rove hit his stride. His effect on Texas Republican political campaigns was nothing less than phenomenal. He was the right man at the right time. Things were ready for him, he understood what could be done and he pulled together the resources and won elections.
Then he went with George W. bush to Washington, where his campaign skills remained powerful, but his lack of policy and administration skills together with Bush's inattention to governing has led to results for the national Republican Party that are shaping up to be as remarkably bad as Rove's early campaign and political efforts were successful. Each of those periods will be discussed here.
Texas Republicans - pre-Rove
The Texas I grew up in during the 1950's and 1960's was all Democratic Party. Conservative, racist, but Democratic in organization. Political battles were fought out in the Democratic Primary between conservative Democrats and liberal Democrats.
That began to change when Lyndon Johnson ran for both Vice-President and for his Senate seat in 1960 and won both. When he took the Vice-President job, the Senate seat was opened up for a special election in 1961, and an obscure college government teacher from Wichita Falls named John Tower won the Senate seat - as a Republican!
The next Senate election was 1964, and the Republican nominee was a politically well-connected oil executive, George H. W. Bush. He lost to the Democrat, but in 1966 won a seat in the House which he held for two terms. Nixon convinced him to give up that seat in 1970 and run for Senate, but he was defeated by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen.
This was really where the takeover of Texas by the Republican Party started. John Tower, as the Texas Republican with a state-wide office, spent his time in office (1961 until 1985 when he retired, to be replaced by Phil Gramm) building the Texas Republican Party both financially and institutionally.
Rove and the Republican take-over of Texas
John Moritz, staff writer at Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote yesterday about the Rove-inspired Republican takeover of Texas.
Before Karl Rove was the architect of the George W. Bush presidency, he was the chief designer and construction manager of the Republican takeover in Texas, allies and adversaries of the outgoing White House chief political strategist agreed Monday.Rove then went on to manage a number of key political campaigns in Texas:
"He was absolutely the driving force dating back to the late '70s and early '80s when he helped recruit candidates and hone the party's message," said Reggie Bashur, a Republican operative in Austin who has known Rove for more than 20 years. "He clearly saw the inflow of population to the suburbs of Texas, and recognized early on that that population would be inclined to vote Republican."
Democratic strategist Kelly Fero agreed that Rove, who drew the blueprints for Bush's two successful bids for Texas governor and for both campaigns for the White House, helped cement the GOP's lock on Texas politics.
"He certainly deserves a lot of the credit," Fero said after Bush announced the departure of his longtime friend and aide. "But it's remarkable how big a genius you can appear to be when your timing is good."
Implicit in Fero's reaction was the notion that Texas was ripe for partisan makeover as the old-line Democrats began fading from the scene and leaving the largely conservative Texas voters more at home with the new breed of Republicans who were eager to show them the door. But Bashur said that Rove's vision and determination had helped to accelerate the demise of the Texas Democrats.
"It's one thing to see it coming," Bashur said. "It's another to develop a plan, articulate a message and find the candidates."
The first was Dallas oilman Bill Clements' first run for governor in 1978, Eppstein said. At the time, no Republican had occupied the Governor's Mansion since Reconstruction, but Clements won a narrow victory by running as a plain-spoken outsider with business sense.Rove's years in Washington.
Eppstein said that Rove's next shrewd move came in the early 1980s when then-Democratic congressman Phil Gramm, a College Station conservative, fell out of favor with the more liberal party leaders in Washington. Rove helped persuade Gramm to resign his seat, switch parties and run to regain his seat as a Republican. The gambit worked, and the notoriety helped put Gramm in a position to run for and win a U.S. Senate seat in 1984.
Although Clements lost his bid for re-election in 1982, Rove helped him recast his crusty image as a more friendly grandfatherly type for his successful comeback in the 1986 governor's race.
With Democrats still in solid control of Texas politics in 1993, Rove signed on with Kay Bailey Hutchison, then the state treasurer, when the other U.S. Senate seat was vacated by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen's move to become U.S. treasury secretary. In a special election, Hutchison routed the Democrat appointed to replace Bentsen.
Rove's next big campaign came when Bush challenged popular Democrat Ann Richards in the 1994 governor's race. The former president's son followed a highly disciplined campaign that seldom strayed from his core message. [Snip]
Jim Moore, a former broadcast journalist in Austin and the co-author of two books about Rove, said that while the high-profile races received the most attention, it was Rove's efforts on behalf of candidates farther down the ballot that ensured his enduring clout.
"It got so that nobody who was a Republican in Texas who ran for office didn't seek the counsel of Karl Rove," Moore said.
"And by the time Karl left for Washington, D.C., there wasn't a Democrat left standing under the Texas sky."
James Carville wrote an article (published in the Financial Times) entitled "How Karl Rove lost a generation of Republicans."
Mr Rove picked up seats in what was an almost historically impossible context in 2002. Then in 2004, he engineered one of the most remarkable feats in American politics. He got Americans to re-elect a president who they really did not want to re-elect. Even the Republican defeat in 2006 was predictable and well within the range of historical norms so, by this sport’s standard of winning and losing, there is still no black mark on Rove’s record. [Snip]Summary of Rove's career
There is no doubt that Mr Rove won elections. He has perhaps one of the most remarkable win-percentages in modern American politics. [Snip]
If only things were so neat and simple. The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.
A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government. [Snip]
The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.
Mr Rove's famous electoral strategy – focusing on the Republican base first – is also largely responsible for a shift in international public opinion against the US. It would not be fair to blame Mr Rove for the Iraq war. But it is clearly fair to blame his strategy for the Terry Schiavo fiasco and the Republicans’ adherence to the policies and doctrines of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson. The world and now most of the US are contemptuous of the theocratic underpinnings of the policy Mr Rove ushered into government. [Snip]
Mr Rove was the architect of social security reform, immigration, the hiring and firing of justice department officials and the placement of literally thousands of ideologically driven buffoons throughout the US government. As deputy chief of staff he was also responsible for handling the White House post-Katrina reconstruction efforts. On these actions, history has already rendered its judgment on Mr Rove. And, as we say in Louisiana, “it ain’t pretty”.
So the Rove story starts with him walking into a changing political climate in Texas which he then took tremendous advantage of. Then he moved on to the national scene with his political creation, George W. Bush. He was expected to live up to his Texas reputation when on the national scene.
However, on the national scene, both Rove's abilities and his weaknesses came into play. An effective President could have used his abilities and prevented his liabilities from damaging the Administration and the Republican Party, but Bush 43 had and has no interest in or understanding of governing. In addition, neither Bush nor Rove really care about the future of the Republican Party. The result of their mutual ineptitudes and disinterests is well described by James Carville.
Rove may have a third, post-bush-Presidency chapter in his career, but whatever degree of success he has from now on will depend on him working for someone who can adjust for his severe weaknesses in policy, administration, and attitudes of cooperation with other politicians. Whether he will work for Fred Thompson or someone else under the kinds of restrictions he needs remains to be seen.
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