MSNBC's Dan Abrams Tags Rove 'Constitutional Crippler' | NewsBusters.org

MSNBC's Dan Abrams Tags Rove 'Constitutional Crippler' NewsBusters.org:

"DAN ABRAMS: Karl Rove is out. Rove announced this morning he was resigning from
the Bush administration. The man who is sometimes referred to as 'Bush's brain'
will leave the White House on August 31. My take. If Karl Rove had been a
professional wrestler, they might have called him 'the Constitutional Crippler.'
I'll leave his political legacy to others, although I will say I think it's
foolish when searching for explanations for the 2000 Republican rout to blame
Rove, the political operative, as opposed to Rove, the chief policy analyst.
That was the war speaking. How the Republicans talked about it in the campaign
wouldn't have changed a thing. But in terms of his legal legacy, Rove has long
applied basic political strategy to the courts: Accuse your opponents or critics
of engaging in the very behavior that could become your own Achilles heel. Rove
has accused judges of bending the law to fit their personal agenda. It's true,
some do. But I can't think of a federal judge who has done that more than Karl
Rove himself. Rove called the federal judiciary 'fundamentally out of touch with
mainstream America.' A nice campaign slogan, but it demonstrates a fundamental
misunderstanding of the role of judges. They're not supposed to reflect popular
opinion. It also demonstrates some hypocrisy. He cites the will of the people
until, of course, it comes to the people's reaction to this administration's
policy. Then he ignores it. And he even said, quote, 'I'm not going to stay or
leave based on whether it pleases the mob.'"

First of all click on the link to read the rest of this great piece.

Like him or not, Rove has changed the face of American politics, and it will never be the same. His greatest secret to power may in the end be that we don't know what effect he had. We know for sure that he was key to getting many of the things this administration wanted, done. What we don't know that much about is how involved he was in some of the most controversial topics in Washington. He was a political machine, it has been said that he lived to win elections. He was very good at winning elections, and in doing so I believed he changed the ways that elections are fought.