Yay?

[prole]

America's version of Heinrich Himmler is back to restore the Republican Reich. Is this the moderate white-knight the teabagger skeptical within the GOP were hoping for?

 

Rove Returns, With Team, Planning G.O.P. Offensive

By JIM RUTENBERG

 

WASHINGTON — In 2004, the Republican master strategist Karl Rove led weekly sessions at his Washington residence where, over big plates of his butter-smothered “eggies” and bacon slabs, he planned the re-election of President George W. Bush — and what he hoped would be lasting Republican dominion over Democrats.

 

In April, Mr. Rove summoned several of the important players behind Mr. Bush’s ascendance to his home once again, this time to draw up plans to push a Republican resurgence.

 

Over takeout chicken pot pies, the group — the Republican fund-raiser Fred Malek, the onetime lobbyist and Bush White House counselor Ed Gillespie, and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary Cheney, among others — agreed on plans for an ambitious new political machine that would marshal the resources of disparate business, nonprofit and interest groups to bring Republicans back to power this fall.

 

When Mr. Rove left the White House in 2007, Democrats rejoiced at what they believed would be the end of his political career and the brand of Republicanism he espoused. This election season is proving that he is back — if he ever really left at all.

 

The landscape has changed, with Mr. Rove at times clashing with potent new Tea Party-style activists, some of whom view him as a face of the old party establishment they want to upend.

 

Already a prominent presence as an analyst on Fox News Channel and a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Rove is also playing a leading role in building what amounts to a shadow Republican Party, a network of donors and operatives that is among the most aggressive in the Republican effort to capture control of the House and the Senate.

 

He has had a major hand in helping to summon the old coalition of millionaires and billionaires who supported Mr. Bush and have huge financial stakes in regulatory and tax policy, like Harold C. Simmons, a Texas billionaire whose holdings include a major waste management company that handles some radioactive materials; Carl H. Lindner Jr., a Cincinnati businessman whose American Financial Group includes several property and casualty insurance concerns; and Robert B. Rowling, whose TRT Holdings owns Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.

 

Their personal and corporate money — as well as that of other donors who have not been identified — has gone to a collection of outside groups Mr. Rove helped form with Mr. Gillespie, including American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which in turn are loosely affiliated with similar groups staffed or backed by other operatives and donors with ties to Mr. Rove. With $32 million and counting, they are now filling the void created by the diminished condition of the Republican National Committee, which has faced fund-raising difficulties under its embattled chairman, Michael Steele.

 

“A lot of what we’re doing would normally be done with the R.N.C.,” said Ms. Cheney, who is part of a group, the Alliance for America’s Future, that is working with the organizations Mr. Rove helped start on encouraging early voting in House races this fall. “There’s no money there.”

 

Crossroads officials say they are seeking to supplement party activities, not replace them.

 

In a brief interview, Mr. Rove said he was trying to help build something that would remain in place beyond November. “We want this to be durable,” he said.

 

Already, plans at American Crossroads include an anti-Democratic barrage of attack ads that will be run tens of thousands of times, a final get-out-the-vote push with some 40 million negative mail pieces, and 20 million automated phone calls, officials there say.

 

“They’re running a very proficient party operation funded by millions of dollars of undisclosed special-interest dollars,” said David Axelrod, a special adviser to President Obama. Referring to Mr. Rove and Mr. Gillespie, he added, “These guys are great political operatives, and they will have an impact in this election.”

 

But if Mr. Rove and his colleagues remain prime movers of the Republican establishment, it is less clear that their influence extends into — and will not be diminished by — the grass-roots conservative movement that has energized and somewhat reordered the party this year.

 

Mr. Rove has at times warned against insurgent candidates who in his view would reduce Republican chances of winning a seat. And as the embodiment of the inside-Washington power structure, he and his associates are viewed with some suspicion by the new forces driving the party, in particular former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and the Tea Party activists who eschew the sort of big-tent, top-down party order Mr. Rove stands for.

 

Tensions boiled over recently when Mr. Rove publicly criticized as unelectable the Tea Party-backed candidate who won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware, Christine O’Donnell. His stance prompted blistering criticism from activists and Ms. Palin, who, in a “woodshed moment” clearly directed at least in part at Mr. Rove during a recent speech in Iowa, called for party unity, asking, “Did you ever lose a big game growing up?”

 

Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative strategist who has allied with Tea Party activists, said, “We’re all on the same page until the polls close Nov. 2.”

 

But, referring to Mr. Rove and Mr. Gillespie as part of the “ruling class,” he added, “Then a massive, almost historic battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party begins.”

 

The longstanding descriptions of Mr. Rove as an all-powerful Republican puppeteer exaggerate and oversimplify his role. And he has no paid, official position with the Crossroads groups, serving instead as an informal adviser alongside Mr. Gillespie.

 

Operations are overseen by the chairman, Robert M. Duncan, a former Republican National Committee chairman and 40-year Rove associate, and the chief executive, Steven Law, a former general counsel to the United States Chamber of Commerce and a onetime chief of staff to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

 

Last year, Mr. Rove and Mr. Gillespie began reviewing the new landscape of groups Democrats had formed when they were out of power, asking themselves, Mr. Gillespie said, “What do they have that we don’t have?”

 

Mr. Law recalled first hearing of plans to form a more ambitious entity supporting conservative candidates and causes from Mr. Gillespie last October, when, he said, “I could just see the political atmosphere changing dramatically in the Republicans’ favor, and there really needed to be a professionally run, full-service political operation built up.”

 

Mr. Rove set out to raise money to build just such an operation at the same time he was trying to help unify the party behind the candidates he viewed as having the best chances to win in the midterm elections. But he encountered early resistance from the party’s new crop of activists.

 

At a meeting in Delaware, Tea Party-style leaders rebuffed Mr. Rove’s case for Representative Michael N. Castle as the party favorite for the Senate seat there.

 

“He started talking about the possibility of votes being split and the work we were doing could cost candidates the election,” said Russ Murphy, a retired electric company worker and executive director of a new group called the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, who also shared his story on Ms. O’Donnell’s victory stage. “I interrupted him and said, ‘With all due respect, we don’t endorse the party and won’t endorse the party; that’s not what this is about.’ ”

 

But Mr. Rove, along with Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Duncan, was having better luck on the fund-raising circuit.

 

American Crossroads formally registered with the Internal Revenue Service in March with an initial reported donation of $250,000 from B. Wayne Hughes of Kentucky, the chairman of Public Storage Inc. That was followed by a donation of $1 million in April from Trevor Rees-Jones of Texas, the chief executive of Chief Oil and Gas.

 

Around the same time, Mr. Rove came up with the idea of gathering other like-minded outside groups at his home on Weaver Terrace in Northwest Washington. Calling themselves the Weaver Terrace Group in honor of that first meeting, the participants now regularly reconvene at the Crossroads offices downtown to ensure that they work in tandem and avoid overlap.

 

Central to the effort is the development of a sophisticated list of voters that several of the groups share and contribute to, helping organizations like Ms. Cheney’s, for instance, to identify people likely to vote by early absentee ballot in House races.

 

Officials at American Crossroads later started a new entity, Crossroads GPS. Registered under section 501©(4) of the tax code — a designation that in theory requires it to focus primarily on issues rather than candidates — it has raised roughly half of the $32 million the Crossroads groups have reported raising between them.

 

At least until recently, Crossroads GPS had served as the dominant conduit for advertisements. It has not shied away from running commercials helpful to Tea Party-backed Senate candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky, and, in a large way, Sharron Angle in Nevada.

 

(Several of its ads have been criticized for “badly misleading claims” by FactCheck.org, the political advertising monitoring service of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)

 

Whatever battle Mr. Viguerie predicts, Mr. Duncan said the group would have staying power. “We’re going to be involved in 2012,” he said. “That’s what we’re gearing for.”

[Stonehead]

What exactly is democracy? When everything’s said and done, is it in the end just a public stamp of approval on government actions which might turn out to be contrary to the ultimate well-being of the people?

 

I don’t buy the whole line of “if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain”. What a load of horseshit! Some people consider elections to be a sham, not necessarily that there’s widespread corruption but that such large amounts of money are thrown into public relations campaigns to influence the results. In essence the few quiet insistent but rational voices are drowned out by the roar of rushing money. These people choose not to endorse a flawed system by participating in it.

 

The process of voting in itself is no protection. Can’t a democracy foster in a fascistic system? Aren’t we tacitly endorsing the latter system by allowing technology to tip the balance? Saul Allinsky wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in today’s world of techno-authoritarianism. F--- people power.

 

Seriously, are there other ways of petitioning the government for redress of grievances other than through a representative or through the initiative process? For that matter, why government? Not that a person would wage war, which would be insane but perhaps the acceptance that a solution for everything need not be provided. Just live life with all its flaws, accept mortality and suffering as part of the human condition, and perhaps use the greatest tool you were given, not for the pursuit of power but in the pursuit of real happiness.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

If you choose not to participate, you can continue to complain all you want.

 

Just don't expect anyone to give a fuck.

 

Of course, you can whine about that, too, which is, after all, probably the real emotional need being indulged here.

 

And no, it's not just about number one, unless you're content with being an eating, shitting, sleeping, and fucking bag of smelly protoplasm.

Edited September 26, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[Stonehead]

No, you completely miss the point of what I'm saying.

 

Why did you decide to grow your own garden?

[tvashtarkatena]

Fair enough. Try restating it, cuz I couldn't dig it out of your post, which seemed to be all over the place, at least to me.

 

I grew my own (veg) garden because:

 

1) Mowing is pointless

2) The kids in the neighborhood like it

3) I hate going to the grocery store

4) Quality and variety of commercial produce blows

5) I like to learn about shit...literally.

[prole]

What exactly is democracy? When everything’s said and done, is it in the end just supposedly a public stamp of approval on government actions which might turn out to be contrary to the ultimate well-being of the people? I don’t buy the whole line of “if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain”. What a load of horseshit! Some people consider elections to be a sham, not necessarily that there’s widespread corruption but that such large amounts of money are thrown into public relations campaigns to influence the results. In essence the few quiet insistent but rational voices are drowned out by the roar of rushing money. These people choose not to endorse a flawed system by participating in it.

 

The process of voting in itself is no protection. Can’t a democracy foster in a fascistic system? Aren’t we tacitly endorsing the latter system by allowing technology to tip the balance? Saul Allinsky wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in today’s world of techno-authoritarianism. F--- people power.

 

Seriously, are there other ways of petitioning the government for redress of grievances other than through a representative or through the initiative process? For that matter, why government? Not that a person would wage war, which would be insane but perhaps the acceptance that a solution for everything need not be provided. Just live life with all its flaws, accept mortality and suffering as part of the human condition, and perhaps use the greatest tool you were given, not for the pursuit of power but in the pursuit of real happiness.

I'd be reluctant to generalize about "democracy" based on an elite dominated, media-driven, capitalist State that's been stripped of a meaningful democratic practice (participation, citizenship, accountability to the governed, etc.) and replaced by a moribund duty (vote every once in a while). In a way you are certainly right: Using the word "democracy" to describe the political system we currently serves to legitimate what it actually does. We need need new language and analytical tools to describe what we actually have to work with. Plutocracy, oligarchy, etc., while off the mark, are certainly better equipped to an analysis of our situation than an uncritical acceptance of "democracy" as a descriptive term. From a practical standpoint, democracy is not a static end-point as the punditry would have us believe. It's an active practice whose health can be continually assessed and improved upon. While our political units and our economic networks are as large as they are, representative decision making is necessary (have you ever sat through a consensus meeting?). Keeping that process "representative" as opposed to an every-four-year-rubber-stamp-by-the-people-for-politicians-to-do-fuck-all is a question of democratic health (educated mobilized actively engaged citizenry) as well as maintaining substantive equality with regard to access to the political system and making changes to political charters when they're designed to inhibit the same. "People power" is all there is in a society composed of people, your cry in the wilderness for a "post-political" politics is a non sequitur and better suited to the philosophical ether or primitivist pipe dreams than the here and now.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2010 by prole

[tvashtarkatena]

You get the government you deserve.

 

 

[prole]

You get the government you deserve.

 

There's an assumption there that "the system" is a vessel that actually works and that it's just filled with spoiled contents. If you read Hamilton, Madison, Jay, et al and their dissenters you realize that those who came out on top in those critical struggles had a very specific kind of order in mind. In that light, our current situation is not all that surprising. While we do (still) have tools at our disposal, those tools need to be put to use reforming the process itself, not fetishizing it.

Edited September 26, 2010 by prole

[tvashtarkatena]

Reforming the process requires working within the process. It's always a mixed bag...always has been.

 

Bigotry is going down in this country - racial, gender, and sexual equality are all on the rise through statute, jurisprudence, and just plain social norms.

 

Conversely, we're now in our fourth decade of a drug war that puts blacks in prison with a documented, court recognized 3x bias. So now it's time to tackle that one.

 

The progressive myth has always been that there will be some magic sea change in 'global consciousness' and that everything will suddenly be rainbows and friendly unicorns afterwards.

 

Don't hold your breath. The boxing match never ends. The key is this: if you're not in the ring, someone else will be.

 

 

 

 

[prole]

I heard that.

 

Campaign finance reform is the single biggest hurdle facing meaningful reform of the political process. Public financing, open media, better access for third, fourth, fifth parties, complete transparency in private funding (if we're to have it at all), stricter conflict of interest disqualification, etc. Gotta get the money out, it's a sick joke as it stands now. While the language is there on some level (good), I don't see the "grassroots", "anti-establishment" Tea Party addressing meaningful political reform in any way whatsoever. I'd be happy to entertain examples where it seems I'm misinformed on this point. Any genuine movement for change that might have been there in the beginning has been hopelessly co-opted by the Koch/Armey money machine (what happened to "end the fed", for example?). These guys vs. Karl Rove? It's a slumber party pillow fight with real people getting locked out (again). Back to the drawing board...

Edited September 26, 2010 by prole

[tvashtarkatena]

I agree that public campaign financing at the minimum amount to give a candidate a meaningful shot would be a good reform, but I don't think campaign financing matters that much, nor do I think that our system is any more broken than it ever was. Most get-out-the-vote volunteers are just that - they work for free, and in the age where anyone can make a campaign commercial with a $200 camera and post it for free, when network viewing is headed into the dirt, it's just not as big a deal as it once was.

 

Political apathy and lack of participation is a much bigger deal, IMO.

 

If you want your agenda put into practice, send money and manpower to an organization with a measurable track record of getting results...in addition to any personal lifestyle choices you might be willing to make to chip away at the problem.

 

It's pretty much that simple. Interesting how few people actually do those things, however shrill the conversation becomes.

 

 

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

As for our system, it's really no better or worse than any other democratic system out there. It's the people both in and outside the system that matter.

 

 

[Stonehead]

Yeah, I came across more cynical than necessary. I don’t want to burn the system down. In its ideal state, it’s probably the best system that we can have. But here, I evoke the words of Henry David Thoreau who said: “That government is best which governs least” and who qualified his sentiment by adding, “But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

 

The crux of it is that I don’t feel that government need necessarily be the primary vehicle to effect social change. It’s like that anecdote about Gandhi where a mother complains about her son eating too much sugar. She brought the problem to the wise man for him to solve but he said nothing other than for her to return in two weeks. When those two weeks were up, she went back to Mahatma who confessed to the mother that he could offer no solution before eliminating his own habit of consuming sugar. Sure, one could focus on the point of the story as being about not appearing hypocritical but I choose to see it about the importance of the individual in dispelling ignorance and effecting change.

 

I just believe that the apparatus of government while it is used to pursue worthwhile goals such as eliminating institutionalized bigotry or other social justice issues, these same causes are also the vehicle by which government exerts more and more control over an individual’s free will. Putting aside notions of what free will is, this impetus might not necessarily be a bad thing because sometimes we need a prod in the right direction despite having all or most of the information necessary. But, something still bristles on my gut level at that notion of being governed.

 

Now, I don’t believe in the full caricature that we’re automatons or becoming such, but I have moments when it doesn’t seem such a farfetched conjecture. Perhaps a Freudian or other psychoanalyst could chalk it up to anti-authoritarian tendencies developed during my formative years. Or, perhaps a sociologist / historian could say that it’s not so much ontogeny as it is something more along the lines of phylogeny, that culturally we’re still in our formative years towards a more mature society.

 

But again, I just happen to believe that change is effected at the individual level and I would reiterate the emphasis brought forth by Lysander Spooner on the idea of the ‘consent of the governed’, that the social contract implies that the agreement is valid when there are two consenting parties. If I understand correctly, undue influence by one party exerted over the other implies a situation of duress in which case the agreement may legally become null and void. Here, there is no longer free mutual consent rather it is a matter of imposition of the state upon its citizens. So this is becoming the situation where nullification appears to be the answer, not across the board but rather to signal that there are limits to power that will be freely accepted.

 

I don't know if I have the ability to put it more clearly just being an angry hairy ape and all. To summarize: I might have it wrong but my understanding of ordered liberty is that there should be just enough government to protect our freedom but not too much.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

To summarize: I might have it wrong but my understanding of ordered liberty is that there should be just enough government to protect our freedom but not too much.

 

If you've been searching for a statement virtually everyone on the planet can agree with, you might have found it.

 

As its practical meaning, however...

 

Kind of like saying "air is good".

 

 

[prole]

I agree that public campaign financing at the minimum amount to give a candidate a meaningful shot would be a good reform, but I don't think campaign financing matters that much, nor do I think that our system is any more broken than it ever was. Most get-out-the-vote volunteers are just that - they work for free, and in the age where anyone can make a campaign commercial with a $200 camera and post it for free, when network viewing is headed into the dirt, it's just not as big a deal as it once was.

 

Political apathy and lack of participation is a much bigger deal, IMO.

 

If you want your agenda put into practice, send money and manpower to an organization with a measurable track record of getting results...in addition to any personal lifestyle choices you might be willing to make to chip away at the problem.

 

It's pretty much that simple. Interesting how few people actually do those things, however shrill the conversation becomes.

 

I find it hard to believe that anyone with eyes open would suggest that campaign finance doesn't matter that much or that we don't have a bigger hill to climb now than we did 30 or 40 years ago. "Bought and paid for" is a phrase that rates right near the top when people are asked to describe their government. Yes, we have a long way to go in extending basic civil rights in this country and I know that's your deal, but I'm sorry, the "gay weed" issue isn't going to get us very far with the magnitude of the problems we're facing. Or maybe it's that you think the planet's not any worse off than it ever was either.

As far as social networking and youtube candidates go, I would think that we'd actually be seeing some positive results for somebody other than the same elites if this really were a qualitative shift in American politics. How many "grassroots" movements do we need to see written off, ignored, or co-opted before we realize that even millions of mobilized individuals can be made irrelevant in a one-dollar-one-vote system. The resources that truly gargantuan sums of money are capable of marshalling day after day, every single day on multiple fronts to shape daily discourse from school curricula to their own "viral" videos are only outdone by the amount they're spending lobbying the politicians they've already helped elect. What is it about this you're not getting?

"An organization with measurable track record of getting results"? Good thing MLK or Gandhi or any other radical-turned-watered-down-liberal-icon didn't follow your advice, where would we be then? Seriously. Do you think any of the "liburl victories" of the last 70 years you spoke of would actually hold up under the strain of the really good economic and political cataclysm we're headed towards? The teabaggers certainly don't seem apathetic, maybe left politics has been catering to liberal yuppie lifestyle horseshit and gay weed type issues too long and left the everybody else to twist in the winds of religious/patriotic/capitalist fundamentalism. Don't get me wrong, I think any gains are good gains and good work is being done, but a lot of this shit has a kind of "fiddling while Rome burns" quality about it. History is not a one-way street and it's getting late.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

I present to you....

 

....the teabagger movement.

 

Technology is politically agnostic.

[tvashtarkatena]

Big victories are a series of smaller victories. I'll take my gay weed victories over sitting around worrying about the cataclysmic end of civilization as we know it...which I think is hooey, anyway. That's an old story that crops up every now and then.

 

All humanity has to do to cope with any global problem is voluntarily depopulate, which only takes 25 years or so. The solution is always at hand...always will be.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

If you're expecting the fundies and regressives to go away, they won't. They can be beaten at the polls and in court, however, if you get off your ass and help make it happen. If you're looking for the 'dawning of the age of aquarius', well, take another (illegal) bong hit.

 

 

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Um...MLK aligned himself with and leveraged the capabilities of the political establishment and powerful organizations (the ACLU being one) to push the civil rights agenda over many years. You're dreaming if you think he just popped up with a bright idea and led the charge to victory. Hardly. His success (which was certainly not a given until near the end...he very nearly abandoned his efforts) was a result of his strategic thinking and alignments, not because of his inspiring oratory. That was memorialized as a result of his success, not the other way around.

 

Ghandi was also a shrewd coalition builder. You apparently still believe in the Ayn Rand myth of the loan super hero.

 

Then again, there's the shining example of Ralph Nader LOL.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

And let's not forget Ross Perot.

[Stonehead]

Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds

[tvashtarkatena]

Let's also not forget that lobbyists can be just as effective if not more so for their expertise and long term relationships as for their money...and they're not all evil. Our lobbyist in Olympia is as poor as dirt...and won young lawyer of the year. His expertise on the issues and knowledge of individual legislators and their quirks, fears, and concerns is unparalleled. That, not money, is the key to his success.

 

If you think your organization or grass roots movement is going to effectively change policy or legislation in any direction without a good lobbyist, you're high.

 

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

Why fly blind? The other side isn't.

Edited September 26, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[prole]

Big victories are a series of smaller victories. I'll take my gay weed victories over sitting around worrying about the cataclysmic end of civilization as we know it...which I think is hooey, anyway.

 

The 20th century is rife with examples of liberal democracies slipping into barbarism during periods of economic and political chaos. You could even say its one of its key features.

 

I remember being in school during the naval buildup to the second Iraq War. A much younger student suggested that there was no way, knowing how shaky Bush's case for war was and how much opposition there was reflected in the huge global demonstrations, that his administration would be so stupid as to go through with it. There was just no way. The 70 year old professor said she'd never seen the kind of resources expended in a buildup of such magnitude that had not resulted in a war. Given the toxic political climate currently and the direction this country has been headed for quite some time, I think that sentiment can be generalized to the American scene as a whole. You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for American fascism. You have too much faith in your institutions, Tvash. History isn't a one-way street leading toward ever greater freedom. Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

 

[prole]

Um...MLK aligned himself with and leveraged the capabilities of the political establishment and powerful organizations (the ACLU being one) to push the civil rights agenda over many years.

 

Oh, you mean he didn't just put a check in the mail and wait for November?

[kevbone]

This thread = gay