Karl Rove resigning

Well, well. Karl Rove has decided to leave the White House. Might as well. He has done all the damage he can do to America. MSNBC has the story, but it really is little more than saying that he wants to go home and spend more time with his family.

I'm sure that will be a lot of hagiography written about the Republican 'Saint' who created George W. Bush as as a politician, and one who changed the way America has been governed. He changed the idea from one of American politicians working together for the betterment of America in spite of different philosophies to one in which the Republican Party gained dominance to one in which Republicans gained control of the government, passed their most extreme possible legislation by votes that often came down to 50% plus one vote, then used every possible tool of government to sway elections and maintain their small majority. When laws like the Hatch Act got in their way, Rove simply ignored the law and used control of the Department of Justice to avoid prosecution.

I think it is clear that Rove has changed both the Republican Party and the American governmental system, very much for the worse. His focus has been on gaining and using power and trampling on the Constitution when it got in the way of his power grabs.

Crooks and Liars presents the NBC TV announcement of Rove's resignation without analysis or significant comment.

BBC News presents a reasonably straightforward news story that tries to pull together what Rove has meant to this White House.

Simon Rosenberg offers this epitaph:

Karl Rove was the "architect" of one of the worst governments in American history, and the one who engineered the end of modern conservatism, one of the most successful ideological movements of recent times.

Brilliant yes. Bold, without a doubt. A complete and utter failure who left his country and his movement weaker than he found it? Yep.

Eventually, perhaps, disgraced.

Kevin Drum offers this view:

Instant analysis: It doesn't really matter. History will judge Rove a colossal failure, a man who never understood how to govern and, for all his immense knowledge of polls and politics, never really understood the times he lived in. It was 9/11 that both made and broke the Bush presidency, not some kind of mystical McKinley-esque realignment. Rove was blind to that, and blind to the way Bush should have governed after 9/11. His one-track mind, in which every problem is solved by wielding the biggest, nastiest partisan club you can lift, just couldn't adapt. It's fitting that he insisted on making even his final act as calculatedly partisan as he could, announcing his resignation not through the White House press office, but in an interview with the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Sic transit, Karl.

Jeralyn of TalkLeft wrote a blog on Jul 16, 2005 riffing off Frank Rich at the New York Times. Her blog focused on Rich's take on the timing of Rove's even then anticipated resignation, pointing to what Rich wrote in the Sunday, July 17th (now behind NYTimes subscription curtain) edition of the Times:

Frank Rich has a column in Sunday's New York Times in which he writes that Iraq, not the Wilsons, is the real issue in RoveGate. And,

Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

While I tend to follow the subpoenas in analyzing the story, Rich advises you to follow the uranium.

It seems to me that all of 2007 has been a lead-up to September when Gen Petraeus will report on the results of his "Surge." Right now, August, is dead time politically. It is the month of the summer vacations (Bush in Crawford, the Iraqi Parliament in Jordan, and the Germans on the beaches in Spain and Italy) and also the lull before the anticipated political storm of September.

In my opinion, Iraq has been more Cheney's ballgame than Rove's, although Rove has used the Iraq War politically in Domestic U.S. politics masterfully. But time is getting short for Rove's greatest creation, the Bush Presidency. Rove may feel he has nothing left to prove. August 31st could be a really good time for him to get out before the bad news from Iraq breaks and he can't leave without looking like the Democrats ran him out.

This entire Presidency has been about the collective overinflated egos of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove. Why should that change now?

Kevin at LeanLeft asks some interesting questions about the timing of Roves resignation:

Did major GOP players look at the disaster that was 2006 and the albatross that Rove has made of Bush and decided that they couldn’t afford any more of his genius? Or have one of the many, many scandals he had his finger in finally started to catch up to him? Remember, one of his closest aides is deeply involved in the Abramoff scandal and he has been implicated in the US Attorney scandals and his office was giving apparently illegal political briefing to civil servants.

And now that Rove is gone, does this mean that Cheney has even more influence on Bush?

Then there is EmptyWheel over at "The Next Hurrah." She offers a whole series of possible reasons (after dismissing the platitude "More time with the family" garbage for what it is.) The list includes:

• Republicans Think He's a Loser for (among other thngs):
  
  
  • Social Security
  
  
  • Faith-based wingnut welfare
  
  
  • Katrina
  
  
  • The 2006 elections
    and
  
  
  • Rove's effort to court Latino voters vs Republican nativism.


• The Abramoff Investigation


• The OSC Investigation


• The Iglesias Investigation

As always, EmptyWheel's article is worth reading, especially if all the Republican traecley efforts to rewrite history leave an over-sweet taste in the back of your mouth. Rove's history is more of a dark and bitter thing that what we will read on Paul Gigot's Wall Street Journal editorial page.

We live in interesting times, and interesting times makes for good stories. Rove's sudden resignation is just another small chapter in the on-going story story of the Bush attempt at despotism. Where does this story go next?