Mr. Rove is Ready for His Close-Up
Now that Karl Rove"has his reputation back," what’s he going to do with the rest of his life? Here’s what he did last night:
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, June 12 (Reuters) - Republicans should campaign on U.S. economic strength and the war in Iraq as they gear up for the November election, President George W. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove urged on Monday.
"We have the strongest economy of any major industrialized country in the world," Rove told about 400 Republicans at a fund-raising dinner in New Hampshire...
Party officials estimate the fundraiser brought in $60,000. expected to help pay legal bills for a Republican scandal over a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in a 2002 election.
The case led to the conviction of three Republican party officials and seriously squeezed the state party’s finances....
Political consultant Rich Killion, who paid $250 to meet Rove...People who attended just to listen to Rove paid $100 each.
Now I’m sure plenty of people here will be appropriately outraged by the fact that an official paid by taxpayers is out there raising money for a felon’s legal fees.
But I’m too busy laughing at the shabbiness of the whole thing. $60,000?? Whoever heard of a Republican fund-raiser that produced $60,000? Aren’t we missing some zeroes here? $60,000 is the price of the car you drive to the Republican fund-raiser in. Not to mention, it’s not even a down-payment on the $3 million in legal fees stemming from the case.
And what’s Rove’s time worth these days? Shaking hands for $250? Isn’t this like the end of a "Behind the Music" or E! True Hollywood Story, where the celebrity gamely tries to make a comeback, playing small clubs or shaking hands for money at conventions of fans of his long-cancelled show?
Comments (34)
O.J. "I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's."
-- William Blake
June 13, 2006 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fitting that Rove, just after dodging the indictment bullet for his grievous breach of American security policy, would be the NH GOP's featured speaker, a party known for its grievous breach of American electoral law.
Looks like these immoral birds of a feather really do flock together.
June 13, 2006 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a lot of chatter about this going on at TalkLeft where the host has been in communication with Luskin's office who confirmed for him that Fitzgerald does not expect to be bringing criminal charges against rove.
I find particularly intriguing one school of thought that holds that Fitzgerald does not expect to bring criminal charges against Rove because Rove is co-operating against Cheney and has been since he got caught.
Defense counsel there have described a scenario that since Rove, once he realized he was caught, began co-operating with an implicit understanding that he if he was useful he wouldn't be indicted. Since he would never be indicted, there would be no reason to submit an agreement to dismiss the charges.
Fitzgerald's office refuses to comment which I find bizarre. Personally, I think if Fitzgerald's office could issue a truthful statement to help Rove they would. What's he gonna say, As long as Rove co-operates, he won't be charged.
This theory points to the slow leak of information from Fitzgerald's office that all seem to implicate cheney as well as the wisdom of some pundits who feel that bush is peeved with cheney for screwing up all sorts of stuff, including Plame.
there are more little noodles and i recommend checking out the thread, but, I would be interested to know what people here think the chances are that Fitzgerald would actually indict the VP?
June 13, 2006 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno - it's nice to think that the Fitzmas Santa still exists, but I'm not betting on it.
June 13, 2006 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Show me the letter
June 13, 2006 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I REALLY hope you're right. It is the only glimmer of hope that I've gotten. I was beginning to think that Fitzgerald had been bent. How could Karl, who we KNOW was the source for Plame's name, and who SURELY didn't fess that up when questioned...get off with NOTHING?
The BS that he is only guilty if he:
1. Had to know that she was covert. (If everyone ELSE knew it, why didn't Karl?)
and that he:
2. Also had to know that it was a no-no to give up a covert agent.
Hey, people! If a person with any kind of security clearance can't be trusted with security, then they are incompetent.
If they do it for political reasons, they are guilty of treason.
OK, if they did all that (but Fitz can't prove it) and then they lied about it; they committed perjury. So how did he get off?
I REALLY hope that it is because Fitz has bigger fish to fry, but I doubt it.
It makes me worry about Libby's prosecution as well.
Jan Knaus
June 13, 2006 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
How cleared is Rove's reputation? He was cleared about was lying under oath...but how about his role in the little matter of outing a covert CIA operative?
June 13, 2006 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
As it turns out, Robert Novak did not discuss anything with respect to his role in revealing Valerie Plame's CIA status; Novak cooperated; he was not indicted.
Karl Rove lied on several different occasions when asked about his role in this affair; Rove remains unindicted; he most likely has cooperated with the Special Prosecutor. Rove likes to win at any cost, especially when someone else bears it. Like Scooter Libby.
Rove doesn't mind ratting out anyone, except maybe the guy who calls him Turd Blossom.
June 13, 2006 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Karl Rove is a true product of America. ADD:Attention deficit democracy (James Bamford).
The United States is probably the only country in the world that would put a lying scoundrel like Rove into a position of national power for 8 years. How big does the stack of dead bodies have to get for the hardcore Republican types to wake up or just go back into the caves they came out of when this lying bunch of greedy warmongering draft dodgers got themselves 'elected'.
June 13, 2006 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
ummm, sarcasm?
June 13, 2006 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem for every philosopher who ever lived -- a commonplace.
Am I obtuse
Or is the comment abstruse?
What is, pray tell, your excuse?
June 13, 2006 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fitzgerald's office refuses to comment which I find bizarre. Garth
Isn't it illegal for federal prosecutors to comment upon the results of investigations of innocent/unindicted subjects? For legal authority, see, Wilford Brimley in "Absence of Malice."
June 13, 2006 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Plame "outing" was never a matter of the violation of law; it was a matter of the violation of standards of political behavior (think South Carolina and McCain's black "love child").
We demanded a legal remedy; we should have been giving a sermon.
June 13, 2006 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well Ellen you have to realize that Blake was an Idealist (I think) who had no use for crass materialism... Take this quote as an example: "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself" .
Many philosophers would take exception to your characterization of them in that way. For example I find no need to flee from (say) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for fear I might be ensnared in Heisenberg's system as a slave. That particular quote from Blake sounds a little rabid in an individualistic sense to me. I find my existence comprised of a series of discourses with other kindred spirits.
June 13, 2006 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah the "black love child" one is a classic. Was that before or after they said he was beating his wife?
June 13, 2006 9:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ummmmm yeah...sorry Mark.
I had just finished watching the network news, hearing all about how he had been "cleared" and the whole time I was thinking about the actual outing...and snapped when I got to your thread. It was more general frustration and not about your post specifically. ;-)
June 13, 2006 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Umm. I guess I should have said -- PHILOSOPHER. :-)
June 13, 2006 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The United States is probably the only country in the world..."
I give you Jacques Chirac, president of France for more than 8 years, and owner of a long trail of scandal and scurrilousness.
I give you Helmut Kohl, chancellor of Germany for more than 8 years, recipient of donations in black bags, benefiting from off-the-book contributions whose donors he knows but has never revealed even before a parliamentary committee of inquiry.
I give you Silvio Berlusconi, on-again off-again prime minister of Italy, originator of several laws to get himself out of legal jeopardy.
America has no monopoly on scandals, even at the highest political level.
June 14, 2006 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Was that $60k net of expenses? If 400 people attended and 275 of them paid $100 and 125 of them paid $250, that gets you to just about $60k. Not much of a haul but $100 for dinner and a speech by Karl Rove is a pretty good deal.
June 14, 2006 3:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
There could be a distinction between Libby and Rove in that for Libby there was email that directly contradicted a forgetfulness defense. It is settled that Rove discussed Plame with Cooper. Not settled is whether forgetfulness suffices here. Maybe Fitz finds less certainty re Rove.
Regardless, eventually there will be a trial and Rove's role will be clarified.
June 14, 2006 6:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately for prosecutors it is not enough to "know" someone is guilty they have to be able to bring a case they can prove. The are also ethically bound not to discuss the case.
One of the sadder things about current American politics and ironically especially with those paragons of virtue, the Republicans, the new standard of ethics is that if you aren't indicted your behavior is all right.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 14, 2006 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
America has no monopoly on scandals, even at the highest political level.
Gee, why doesn't that make me feel any better?
It might be important to point out that Chirac, Kohl, and Berlusconi are out of power and NONE of them wreaked half of the havoc that our criminal-in-chief has done.
Jan Knaus
June 14, 2006 7:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
...$100 for dinner and a speech by Karl Rove is a pretty good deal.
Not if you count in the deductible, and out-of-pocket when you have to go to the doctor's office for uncontrollable nausea afterwards.
Jan Knaus
June 14, 2006 7:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've said this 100 times, so forgive me. How can "forgetfullness" be an excuse for someone with the highest security clearance who gave out the name of a NOC? How can "not knowing" that something was secret be an excuse for someone trusted with secrets? Why was the highest aide to the president telling the press ANYONE's names? Shouldn't he have had more important things to do? **
If it isn't against the law to give out the name of a protected CIA agent--a name that you know BECAUSE of your "trusted" governmental position, (and regardless of your motives) then WHY ISN'T IT AGAINST THE LAW?
** [An aside: Am I the only person who is bothered by the fact that Karl Rove is now being paid by US taxpayers for the sole purpose of handling the republican's assault on the November elections? Just askin']
Jan Knaus
June 14, 2006 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's also worth noting that Chirac, Kohl, and Berlusconi are all conservatives (by their own national standards anyway--by our bizarrely right-shifted standards their positions would probably be considered far-left-wing here in the U.S.).
June 14, 2006 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, this belongs downthread. I'm not sure what happened.
June 14, 2006 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Count me bothered, too. I like Joe Wilson's image, seeing him frogmarched out of the WH in cuffs.
The "I forgot" defense is dependent on a jury, but would still make a prosecutor a bit nervous, I'd think.
Rove should have lost his security clearance long ago.
June 14, 2006 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
......the new standard of ethics is that if you aren't indicted your behavior is all right.
And if they are indicted they call it a purely political attack. When they are convicted they are just one bad apple Reug that's like all that bad apple Democrats.
June 14, 2006 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
......the new standard of ethics is that if you aren't indicted your behavior is all right.
And if they are indicted they call it a purely political attack. When they are convicted they are just one bad apple Repug that's like all that bad apple Democrats.
June 14, 2006 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Last time I checked Chirac was still the President of France (much to the chagrin of most Gauls).
June 14, 2006 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was rebuked for suggesting (during the Fitzgerald love-in last year) that the whole case would amount to little unless it was prosecuted as a conspiracy or at least traced from the whole manipulation of classified intelligence to dupe Congress and country into war. Fitzgerald may be a great prosecutor, I don’t know. But he played right into the administration’s hand by limiting his investigation to obstruction (thinking he could not prove intent to out Plame to a jury).
Even there he apparently let Rove and his lawyers convince him that he couldn’t prove obstruction on Rove’s bald-faced lies (if he made a deal for Rove’s testimony against Libby, that’s even worse). I guess Rove did not identify himself to the Grand Jury as the “Architect.” The administration have managed what they did in other cases like Abu Ghraib and Katrina- to scapegoat the lowest level guy possible, leaving the administration legally untarnished.
June 14, 2006 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I predicted about a year ago that Rove would skate. At that time, people on these boards said the Democrats shouldn't oppose Roberts or Alito for the Supreme Court, but should keep their powder dry for going after Rove. Now we've got Roberts, Alito, and no Rove. Just another example of why Democrats need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.
June 14, 2006 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, I didn't notice any troops from France or Germany being brought home dead and dismembered from Iraq. Also, the US taxpayer is picking up the $1 trillion dollar tab for this bloodbath.
So Chirac and Kohl game the system, so did Saddam, does that mean we should invade France and Germany? They were at least smart enough not to join the fiasco in Iraq.
Rove is classically American because he plays the bigotry of American right wing whites like a harp. Do you think a bunch of guys who did everything they could to avoid service in wartime give a crap about 'protecting' this country? At least Chirac 'after completing officer's school, Jacques Chirac volunteered to be deployed in Algeria while the Algerian War of Independence was raging' (Wikipedia). Unlike the Chimpster, Chirac has experienced war, and wisely advised Bush against starting one in Iraq
June 14, 2006 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
If its true that Rove has slipped in status among right-wingers, then it is important not to let the focus get too far from him. The guys is a vicious mudslinging troll, and he deserves the kind of treatment he's been dishing out for the last umpteen years. More to the point, even though he's not in the White House anymore, he's still in a position where he can do a lot of damage.
Its just too bad the guy doesn't seem to be mixed up in the sexual shenanigans of the Abramoff gang. The Righties do get outraged about that stuff.
-Dave Adams-
June 15, 2006 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink