Especially Dan Rathers.
Posted on 11/06/2004 3:52:30 PM PST by republicanbred
The year was 1968. The Vietnam War and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were shaping history. Little did I know that walking next to me in the halls of Olympus High School that year was a friend who would shape history in 2004 as profoundly as these events did in 1968, the year Karl Rove and I were 17. Karl started out with every social disadvantage. He was the new kid, physically still pre-pubescent, the classic nerd, with Coke-bottle glasses, pants too short, belt too tight and, to make it even worse, he was non-Mormon. Yet at a very clique-ish high school, he managed to break into the social elite by understanding who was in charge and how to appeal to them. He had an energetic but not a charismatic personality. He was intelligent, but not a genius; he was well-read, but tried a little too hard to let you know that.
Karl Rove Junior at Olympus High School, 1968.
Karl became my friend and political counterpart. I was the student body president; he was president-elect of the student senate. We conducted political conventions at our high school. He organized the Republicans. I organized the Democrats. But when the convention was over, the rest of us went back to worrying about our next zit, our next date, making the team. Some thought about college, the SATs, the war and occasionally "What does it all mean?" Karl remained consumed by politics; not the ideology, the principles or the social ramifications of politics, but the infrastructure, the wheeling and dealing, the game and, most of all, the winning. Most of our friends were academically focused with goals of becoming doctors, lawyers, professors and scientists. But with typical youthful idealism we also dreamed about our future romances, our families and making the world a better place. Karl was the only 17-year-old I'd ever met whose dreams were limited to being a political operative, period. One mutual friend said, "Karl would stare at a sunset and see only the political implications of it." I never remember Karl talking about making the world a better place. His next milestone: At age 22 he conducted a conference for young Republicans on the art of dirty-tricks politics. Thirty years later he has accumulated a remarkable winning streak at political gamesmanship, but with the Machiavellian mantra of the end always justifies the means. The means have been astonishingly brutal. When Rove decided to reach for the top he found the only presidential candidate who lacked everything he could provide. The symbiosis of Bush and Rove has steamrolled through the political landscape like the Terminator
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wearing an Alfred E. Newman mask and a cowboy hat. On the outside there is Bush, with his "aw shucks" down-home-guy act who says he's on a mission from God. On the inside is Rove, the scorched-earth killing machine whose mission is to destroy every political opponent in its path. On the outside there is Bush, who brags about not reading newspapers or anything else. On the inside there is Rove who reads everything and has unmatched attention to detail. On the outside is Bush, who seems to truly believe in Bible literalism and creationism and who admits to allowing his foreign policy to be shaped by an apocalyptic view of the imminent second coming of Jesus. On the inside is Rove, who thinks of the Second Coming as the re-elect-Jesus campaign. For Karl, winning is the only goal and the tactics used have no ethical, moral, factual or even legal restraint. The latest edition of Rove's smear campaigns came in the form of the Swift Boat Veterans' now totally discredited version of John Kerry's Vietnam service. It did what smear campaigns always do. It diverted attention away from what really matters. I can't say that in 1968 I saw all the seeds of what Karl Rove would become. I am surprised more people haven't been willing to stand in his way. But a person that relentless, that single-minded, that focused loses peripheral vision, and that's where someone more introspective might see the collateral damage of their obsession. If Karl the Terminator would pause long enough to turn his head a little to either side he would notice that in the movie of real life the victims scattered all over the highway are not just the Democrats but democracy itself. An electorate distracted by dirty tricks is less able to vote to protect the public interest, which is the whole purpose of democracy. A distracted, deceived and fearful electorate is the precursor of fascism. Far better than any of his old friends, Karl truly has achieved his dream job. Unfortunately for the rest of us it's become our nightmare.
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Bad enough we have to look under our beds for Halliburton, to now we have to add Karl.
Well, I actually just found it tonight and did a search with the headline on the free republic to see if it had been posted here, and couldn't find that it had been. If it made the rounds, it wasn't anywhere I had visited.
Sorry for wasting the space if it shouldn't have been posted.
This guy has been reading Tuchman's "Guns of August." Of von Schlieffen:
Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, "An unimportant obstacle."
Forget the "to".
Especially Dan Rathers.
My tagline says it all. Its meant as a compliment, BTW.
When they get upset, they even forget who they are. Democrats are the endless pragmatists; that's why they can't understand people with moral values. And yet, they continually blame us, labelling our motivations with their own.
Love how much they hate Karl Rove! heh heh"
Too bad the guy canpt realize that the Swifties were correct. Their story of John sKerry in service in Viet Nam is the correct one. The phoney PH's, and his re-created discharge status is all a lie, and this guy and millions like him can't see it.
Maybe if sKerry tries to rear his ugly head again on the national stage, Hillary and Bill will find the details of sKerry's Form 180, and put an end to the hero status of sKerry once and for all.
The author needs some kool-aid to ease his angst.
I wonder if their grieving process will ever end.
4 More years!
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YEP!!!! |
"the Swift Boat Veterans' now totally discredited version of John Kerry's Vietnam service."
Since none of what the Swiftvets alleged was ever discredited, let alone totally discredited, this moron's entire "story" is not wothy of belief. He's impeached himself. STFU gnat.
Geez, if he is a Mormon he has to be a "jack-mormon", one in name only. I am Mormon and do not know one died in the wool Mormon who would have voted for a man who has a value system so far off from ours.
My apologies. I just searched the forum and found no threads here either, so you were quite correct in posting it. I must have read the comments on another site when the article came out last week and then assumed I'd read 'em here on FR. Sorry about that.
Maybe that's what Sandy had in his pants!! :)
This is disgusting, am I to beleive a Mormon wrote this? You mean there a psycho-lefy Mormons? That's sad.
Karl Rove is a political genius and these losers should line up to kiss his *ss in Macy's window, as we used to say in NYC.
The media is trying hard to put the Swift Boat stuff on the historical record as a smear. Just because we won and now have a bit less tied up in the argument doesn't mean we should let them get away with it. We owe it to the Swifties to continue to defend them.
I don't think we know if the writer was Mormon or not ... he never said one way or another .... just that Rove wasn't.
>> The latest edition of Rove's smear campaigns came in the form of the Swift Boat Veterans' now totally discredited version of John Kerry's Vietnam service.
I see the left-wing flakes are still lying about the Swift Boat Veterans.
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