Rove Laments Early Start To '08 Race

Bush's Top Political Adviser Says Candidates Need Time To Hone Messages

(The Politico)  By The Politico's Mike Allen and John F. Harris.

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White House senior adviser Karl Rove says the 2008 presidential candidates have been pushed into such an early focus on tactics, fundraising and publicity that they risk a backlash from voters long before the first primary ballots are cast.

"I think it is going to mean that people develop a persona earlier and wear out their welcome earlier than they would," he told The Politico in an interview. "I think there's going to come some point this year where people are going to basically be saying: 'I'm largely disinterested in the contest.' "

But Rove doubts that will slow the campaign. "There's going to be so much momentum from everybody feeling like they need to continue to move around the country and do things and to engage each other," he said.

In the wide-ranging half-hour interview in his West Wing office late last week, Rove also remarked on a shift in relations between the administration and Congress since the Democrats gained power.

"The entire White House is spending a lot more time talking to the Hill and a lot more time seeking feedback and giving them the time that they want," Rove said. He said his own outreach efforts including following up on "a letter to me from a Democrat member" who asked him "to look into a specific issue" that he did not reveal.

"Why this member feels comfortable saying, 'Here's something that I want you to look into,' I can't speak to," Rove said. "But I'm glad that she feels that she can say: 'I'd like you to look into this. I think we can find a way to work together.' "

One of three White House deputy chiefs of staff, Rove is in the unaccustomed position of spectator for a national campaign. Candidates and their aides quietly seek his advice as the reigning GOP strategist, and he is likely to serve as the liaison between the Republican nominee and the White House in the fall of 2008.

During the interview late Friday afternoon, Rove was cheery as ever, teasing his underlings and spooning peanut butter on green apple slices as he spoke clinically about the drubbing Republicans took in November, when they lost the House and Senate.

Since the election, Rove has kept a low public profile but has agreed to a series of speeches that began last night with an appearance at a Lincoln Day Dinner — a staple for local Republican groups — in Springfield, Ill. Asked why he's not in the fetal position after a rebuke like the last election, Rove said that when he started in Texas politics, Republicans had 13 of 150 seats in the Texas House. They now have a comfortable majority.

"I am by nature an optimist," he said. "And, look, I know this is an opportunity. I know why we lost. I know we lost the Congress in part because of Iraq, in part because of the sense of entitlement, in part because of the scandals and in part because of beliefs about congressional earmarks and spending.

"I went out there and made speeches about how we've kept discretionary domestic spending underneath inflation, but the average cat out there saw high-profile things about spending that just sunk in," he said. "All those bad things they thought about Washington came back up."

Lamenting the lightning trajectory of the race to succeed his boss, Rove recalled that Bush had a quiet, productive period after his re-election as Texas governor in November 1998 until he started campaigning the following June. Rove said the current contenders may pay a price for being lured into a shooting war four months earlier.

[pakaal]

Seems to me the huge group of Republican and Democrat candidates that have appeared so soon after the '06 midterms is precisely because we want the current administration OUT. It's like "Elections, yay!" but then it's "wait, Bush & Company are still in office, what gives?"

[observantx]

Rove:

Go fvck yourself.

[jimibear]

Much though it galls me to agree with anything this slime-merchant says, he's probably right. To quote Dennis Miller, the average American has the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso. Expecting the electorate to maintain an interest in anything, even something as vital as a presidential election, is unreasonable given the mental deficiencies of the average voter.

Rove shouldn't be bemoaning this, though. All the Republicans have to do is wait until the last minute to name their guy. The voters will be so burned out on Hillary, Obama and Edwards that the Republican pick will seem like a breath of fresh air, instead of the stale f*rt they are sure to be.

Once again, the Democrats are showing they have no idea how to win an election, before the election has even begun. (The Republicans lost the mid-terms much more than the Democrats won.) Their candidates are jumping the gun, and the two front-runners are, for vastly differing reasons, more or less unelectable.

Any non-Republican should be able to win the presidency after 8 years of Bush, but the Dems have shown over and over that they have a genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

[jimibear]

Pakaal, I think the country needs an impeachment, not an 18 month wait. That's what the national mood really calls for.

Since we now live in an idiocracy, though, that's unlikely to happen.

[jimibear]

Of course, naybe this is all intentional on both sides? It's in the interests of the powers-that-be to keep people as uninterested as possible in elections. High turnouts generally lead to changes in office-holders, and politicians don't like that.

Perhaps the early declarations are a way of ensuring that by the time election day gets here, we'll be too bored to turn up at the polls?

[scott4261]

OF COURSE Karl Rove is upset! But he has helped to create a political environment that sells our elections to the highest bidder. As a progressive I lament this, but I accept that we must do whatever it takes to win fairly. If that means we have to start earlier, so be it!

[jsilver2th]

He's just worried too many people are going to be committed by the time they roll out their boy Jeb.

[bvckvs-2009]

Karl's right. It's foolish for the Dems to jump the gun on the 2008 campaign.

They need to develop a message first - something that defines what they're FOR.

[racam-2009]

Carl Rove is going to be just like Bush and the rest of his cronies, no one is going to want to touch them or listen to them. He is the largest part of the corupt administration that was assembled. From this point on Rove will cease to be except that the media will keep him in the picture.

[nolalou]

bvckvs, It isn't just the Democrats, Republicans are doing the same, with Mitt Romney just anouncing today, and Gulianai touring the country, and McCain also hinting he wants to run. The problem is once one candidate 'jumps the gun' the rest feel they have to get in quick, before it's too late and all the money and support are already spoken for.

[ademeyer]

Why is anyone talking to this man? The man responsible for blowing the cover of a CIA expert on WMDs? What a detestible, un-American pig of a person. A political operative responsible for giving us the worst President in American history. Why is anyone talking to him?

[ademeyer]

So, Karl Rove is reduced to talking to Mike Allen and John F. Harris, little string reporters, because Pulitzer Prize winning journalists have had enough of being used to out CIA agents? Do you suppose Rove is cultivating little Harris and Allen in order to use them at some future date to spread more Republican propaganda.

[ademeyer]

Do you suppose Rove is cultivating little Harris and Allen in order to use them at some future date to spread more Republican propaganda? Cause I do! Way to kill your credibility Allen/Harris. Why don't you give Putin a chance to give us his opinion of the Presidential race, next?

[ademeyer]

If I were Allen/Harris I would have picked up a peanut butter smeared apple slice and shoved it right up his little pig snout. OK, I 'll stop posting...you get my drift.

[aaabee-2009]

In two years, this man will be sitting in his living room, snuggly retired from "public service", he will never have to worry about money, he will never have to worry about health care. He will sit in his stately home, probably with a stogie in his mouth and some expensive port in a small glass, with his look-alike, think-alike buddies, and they will rehash the olden days when they ruled the world.

Not only Rove, but Bush and Cheney too. No one will never touch them, no one will hold them accountable. They are going to get away with all of it. Yeah for the GOP.

[fredgrad2000]

Hey Ademeyer -

Not only did you post 4 in a row, but you posted the same tired rhetoric we hear from your kind every single day...blah, blah blah, blah blah...maybe you should read the news every now and again, Karl Rove didn't out Mrs. Wilson, Richard Armitage did; to both early sources!! So get your facts straight before you blather on and on; I come on here a few times a week and all I ever see is complaining and namecalling from you and your MoveOn.org cronies, do any of you on the left actually have any ideas other than opposing anything the President or Republicans propose?...you hate Karl Rove because he has whooped you in 2 straight presidential elections; ones that you think you should have won.

[Razzl]

Either this man is as truly out of touch as his master, or else he knows things are so bad that the only tactic left is to ignore the storm and pretend we are back in some sort of nostalgic state of "normal". Bush and Cheney have whipped up a passionate state of fear and hate which has an energy of its own that will carry the impassioned voters all the way to next November without letup. The idea that any of his four groups above (Blacks, hispanics, suburbanites, young) could even remotely be coaxed to vote Republican in '08 is fantasy. Bush and Rove are reaping what they have sown for themselves and their pathetic musings in reflective moments generate no sympathy from any of us whose lives are thrown into chaos by their moral turpitude.

[tejasdemo]

At the end of the day all the BS (Rove) that gets dished out cant hide the fact that Republicans are the most immoral, crooked,lying group of SOBs in the country and deserve nothing less than banishment to the far reaches of the earth.

[hawksprings]

tejasdemo, and the Democrats are different how?


.

[cantshutup]

razzl...you are ON the money! I agree 100 0/0!!!
Who do they think they're kidding??? They're so out of touch they can reach Mars...

[hangelle]

And I lament Rove's continued presence in the White House, as well as the confusion of these reporters in thinking that anyone gives a hoot about what Rove laments. He's soooo yesterday, and although he belongs in prison, its our fault he and his war criminal gang are not being held accountable. Shame on us.

[skyk-2009]

ROVE IS THE MAN...ANYTHING HE CAN DO TO KEEP A LEFT WING SURRENDER MONKEY OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
Posted by b48151 at 05:21 PM : Feb 13, 2007

Intelligence isn't your strong suit now is it? ROFLMAO I'd suppose you HONESTLY believed Sir Lies-A-Lot when he told you the mission was accomplished... how long ago was that. Now I know we shouldn't complicate you small and insignificant little mind with the FACT that WE the PEOPLE are in charge and WE the PEOPLE went to the POLLS in November and decided that the Bush War was cased by LIES and should be ended. Now everyone know you fascist have a hard time with the concept of a Government by the People, but that's the way it is. ROFLMAO I've got a dog smarter that this Cracker folks! ROFLMAO

[skyk-2009]

Rove's problem is that people are fed up to their eyes with Bush and the elections will focus more and more attention on the failures, COMPETE FAILURES of Sir Lies-A-Lot. ROFLMAO

[inventagod]

Mr. Slimebucket doesn't have to worry, there won't be a Republicon in the White House for another 40 years. Bu$hCo ended the party.

[emhawks]

To me, Karl Rove has always been a sickening person.

[frankbowers]

Any one who believe for one minute that R Armitage outed Valerie Plame need a brain implant and need to speak to me through my tube with a mouth full you might be unable to type or talk. The fact is gw bush, ( true deserter/draft dodger )*** cheney ( draft dodger) and darl rove outed the lady without reguard/concern to the damage they were doing to America and the CIA. The best of good byes Frank Bowers of Austin, TX

[energyecon]

Hey Karl! I have a math question for you!

LOL!