I just thought some of you would enjoy reading this article from the Nation's John Nichols, who sums up the failures of Karl Rove and points out that he might not have been the brilliant Machiavellian mastermind that many of us thought.

More posts (aside from the It List) coming later today.

Adam and eve not Adam and Steve ---duh!

I think a large numbers voters already headed back left as evidenced by the 2006 congressional elections...and as seen by the house cleaning in dallas county courts of anybody with an "R" by their name.

And as far as moving the national conversation right, hopefully that "move" will be limited to election-time rhetoric, i.e., gay marriage. But I don't know if that political ploy has suceeded in actually altering anybody's perception of gay marriage...in fact, acceptance of the idea has grown in the past few years.

So I think it is yet to be see whether Rove has changed the national conversation, or just offered a really cynical way to run a campaign.

and he won best experimental ukulele player at the observer awards

wtf

drex

speaking broadly, i am actually curious how the baby boomer generation will vote after this administration is over. the reason i'm curious is that they were known for being a rebellious and socially liberal generation when they were young. then they slowly got conservative as they got older. then after 9/11 they freaked and went hyper-conservative. now they've been burned. i'm wondering if this will send them back to the middle of the road or if they will even become more liberal.

senior citizens always vote and the boomers could turn an election one way or the other. i think it's pretty clear that younger people know that gay people deserve the same rights as everyone else, that the environment is kinda messed up and needs some help, that health care should be a right not a luxury etc. the only thing that stands in the way is the baby boomers who hopefully have learned that conservatives don't care about protecting moral fortitude as much as they care about lining their already bulging pockets.

just rambling.

well put.

The main manner in which Rove was failure, however, was in his inability to build a permanent coalition around the ideas of the new right.

He set out to build a permanent Republican majority in the U.S., and I'm pretty sure he failed at that, even if his party succeeded in pushing the political conversation in the U.S. much farther to the right.

I agree with everything else you say, however.

sadly, in some ways he has already proven his skill by getting a shaved chimp elected to the highest office in the nation not once but twice.

regardless of the heads-are-rolling mentality so popular now, it is all a little too late i'm afraid. the oil companies and defense contractors have made their war profits and will continue to do so for years to come. the 9th ward in new orleans is decimated. the middle east has essentially been turned into an even more intense pressure cooker. scooter libby will get a full pardon in january 2009. and karl rove will still get work orchestrating elections and campaigns for right wing nuts.

this has all brought about my realization that my least favorite people in the US are the people who now are against the war but say things like "i think the american people were mislead" or any other inane bullshit. if you were mislead, you were foolish. if you were mislead, you didn't pay attention and only heard what you wanted to hear. no one i know ever was tricked into believing there were weapons of mass destruction in iraq. no one i know ever thought that iraq was in any way connected to 9/11. you were mislead because you were bloodthirsty and ready to prove that toby keith's lyrics were true.

speaking of which, toby keith recently claimed that he's a lifelong democrat and was never in support of the iraq war only the afghanistan invasion. in other news, karl rove has just announced he is breaking into artist management and his first client will be a country singer whose name rhymes with "boby nieth"

Fuck. Yes.