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Posted on 12/14/2004, 8:20:45 PM by RWR8189
Democrats have come down with a serious case of Rove Envy. It is a form of jealousy that could have some useful consequences.
The longing is for the strategic clarity and organizational acumen that Karl Rove, President Bush's political top gun, brought to the 2004 campaign. Put aside the fact that Rove has been mythologized by both his friends and his enemies. Ignore (just for the moment) the fact that Bush's campaign against John Kerry was relentlessly negative. What really irks Democrats is that they did a lot of things right this year and were still out-hustled by the GOP. Figuring out why is -- and should be -- a Democratic obsession.
Last weekend offered important public glimpses of the Rove Envy that runs deep in Democratic ranks. In an unusual speech before a gathering of state Democratic leaders in Florida, outgoing Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe went out of his way to praise the Bush campaign.
"They were smart," McAuliffe said. "They came into our neighborhoods.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Scare a 'rat next Halloween and dress up as Karl Rove.
Ummm. Bush put forth an agenda. Kerry just complained about stuff, without much in the way of detail compared to the quantity of complaint.
Boy Oh boy....this just keeps getting better and better. Last wk it was how the Republicans are out breeding the rats. ;o)
not a bad thing as far as the excerpt goes... the compost does not merit a hit from me under any circumstances, so I'll only ever see excerpts.
Sounds like Jeb ought to put down a retainer on Karl for 2008.
Link not there.
And more to the point, they offered people a more attractive vision for America!
Let's not forget that 200,000 votes in Ohio are all that put W over the top in the Electoral College, folks. We failed to pick up Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and lost New Hampshire. Granted, we won the popular vote by 3.5 million, but I think this "Rove is a guru" stuff is a little overrated. Without the tremendous help of the Mass. Supreme Court and our buddy Gavin Newsome, we would probably have a president Kerry inaugural on Jan. 20.
Ever notice when reading an article by E.J. Dionne, there is lisping in your head when the words are read?
Just wondering....
It dosen't matter what kind of organization they have.
Their campaign was run on 1960's themes, and run by 1960's rejects.
Thats why the continue to be losers.
They just keep harping on this. Kerry's campaign was vitriolic. Bush's campaign was issue oriented and true. The liberal media sugar coated Kerry to an extent that perhaps, to them, by comparison, the truth about Kerry seemed negative.
"Let's not forget that 200,000 votes in Ohio are all that put W over the top in the Electoral College, folks. We failed to pick up Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and lost New Hampshire. Granted, we won the popular vote by 3.5 million, but I think this "Rove is a guru" stuff is a little overrated."
Not just a little, but a lot! Ann Coulter has pointed out many times that Rove almost blew this election for Bush. There is no way it should have been as close as it was. Here we were in the middle of a shooting war, with an economy that had improved dramatically, with the Democrat vitriol having gone absolutely nuts, and Bush winds up almost losing Ohio and losing New Hampshire? She was spot on with her criticism of Rove's performance, I thought.
It sure was....and they can take this issue and "shove it" as far as I'm concerned!
Interviewer: "Senator Kerry, why are you jumping up and down on that cartoon of President Bush while your wife Teresa spits on it?"
Senator Kerry: "Because it's so relentlessly negative."
Just looked up Ann Coulter's old column on Rove, the "Boy Genuis." She is spot-on about Rove. When you consider the absurd Dem charges, the protests, Howard Dean, Al Gore, Dan Rather, etc, and the extreme weakness of Kerry personally as a candidate, there was no reason for this election to be anywhere near this close. We should have picked up WI & PA easily, and won the popular vote by 7 million plus. Rove sat on his hands until mid-August, when he should have started assaulting Klown right after Iowa, which essentially knocked out Dean and annoited Klown the standard-bearer.
I have often wondered why the Swiftees waited until after the primary to come out against Klown. Rove & Co. should have been running full steam in Nov. & Dec. 2003 to damage Klown in Iowa, and thus crown Dean or Puppy-Dog the nomination. If Dean had won Iowa, even by a hair, his momentum would have rendered him unstoppable, and the GOP could have aved lots of work and money watching Dean self-destruct throughout the spring and summer of 2004. It is amazing that the GOP didn;t pour tons of money/effort into Dean's Iowa effort, since that investment would have paid dividends all spring and summer. Rove is not a genuis at all, he damn near blew it all this time.
>Let's not forget that 200,000 votes in Ohio are all that >put W over the top in the Electoral College, folks.
So does that make Rove (and it was 119k, not 200k) less of a fine strategist? The fact is, Bush WON. It doesn't matter by how much or how little, GWB WON.
>We failed to pick up Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and lost New Hampshire.
You didn't mention that the President did flip Iowa and New Mexico. You didn't mention that the president improved his performance in just about every state -- including Massachussetts and NYS and Florida -- compared with his percentage margins four years ago. He gained among Hispanics. He gained among blacks. Bush gained among women. Bush gained among Jewish voters.
>Granted, we won the popular vote by 3.5 million, but I think this "Rove is a guru" stuff is a little overrated. Without the tremendous help of the Mass. Supreme Court and our buddy Gavin Newsome, we would probably have a president Kerry inaugural on Jan. 20<
Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda. And maybe history would have been completely different had Ross Perot not run in 1992.
It would be nice if folks would deal with reality. What happened, happened. Bush and Rove took advantage of the situation on the ground. And the key issue that put the president over the top was he was simply viewed as the best leader to fight terrorism and deal with Iraq.
Terrorism is the defining issue of our times, not gay marriage as you claim. Bush simply had better answers than Sen. Kerry on a terrorism war whose outcome will define the United States, the Baby Boomers and Gen X and Gen Y.
Here are the facts, for those who want to continually suggest that Bush and Rove were just "fortunate sons" who merely stumbled into their victories.
In 1994, businessman George W. Bush narrowly defeated a supposedly invincible incumbent, Ann Richards, and became governor of Texas.
In 1998, Gov. Bush was re-elected governor of Texas, dramatically expanding his margin of victory, and gaining among Hispanics and blacks.
In 2000, Gov. Bush narrowly defeated a supposedly invincible semi-incumbent, Al Gore, and became president
In 2002, President Bush became the first president in quite a while to add seats in both the House and the Senate, against all odds for a mid-term election.
In 2004, President Bush widened his margin of victory, increased his total votes by 20 percent, and had key gains once more that paralleled his increased success the second time around in the Texas governor's race. The president also increased the GOP's margins in both houses of Congress, another historic feat.
The principal architect of all five of those victories: Karl Rove. The man was born to beat liberals and Democrats.
President Bush and Karl Rove are far from perfect. They are too liberal from time to time, such as on immigration and bloated federal spending, for example.
Here, however, are the facts: You may not like it, or you may not want to admit it, but the Bush-Rove combination has been beating Democrats for a decade now.
-George
Here ya go: They came into Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic voters away from us."
McAuliffe was much taken with the Republicans' use of consumer marketing techniques to target voters, suggesting that the GOP is at least one technological revolution ahead of the Democrats in figuring out how to turn out loyalists and persuade the persuadable. While Democrats used old-fashioned mobilization techniques -- think of them as Turnout 1.0 -- Republicans were already at Turnout 2.0.
The Republicans, McAuliffe said, "were much more sophisticated in their message delivery," going after a "very specific, targeted niche," which "is what we now need to do as a party."
Howard Dean and McAuliffe don't agree on much. But they do agree on Rove Envy and the need for new approaches.
"We ran the best grass-roots campaign that I've seen in my lifetime," Dean said on "Meet the Press." "They ran a better one. Why? Because we sent 14,000 people into Ohio from elsewhere. They had 14,000 people from Ohio talking to their neighbors, and that's how you win in rural states and in rural America. If we don't do those things, we aren't going to win. We have to learn to do those things."
The comments from Dean and McAuliffe underscore the disconnect between the widely publicized post-election debates over the Democrats' ideological future and the intense discussion among grass-roots activists and bloggers over what the party needs to do to build stronger organizations to compete with Rove Inc.
It's easy to muster a crowd and win press clippings for debates on Iraq and foreign policy. It isn't quite so sexy to talk about why it is that Republican state party organizations are, with a few exceptions, much stronger than Democratic organizations. Strong parties in red states allowed Bush to build his popular vote margin by turning out the faithful in places where he was already strong. Democrats concentrated almost entirely on the battleground states.
That's why the contest over who will chair the Democratic National Committee looks different in the regular press than it does on the activist blogs. Dean's potential candidacy is conventionally seen in ideological terms: a Dean victory would be interpreted as a move to the "left." But on Web sites such as Daily Kos, Dean is seen as a "reformer," an outside-of-Washington figure who will build a stronger party. Dean's comments on "Meet the Press" spoke to this view.
The "reformer" sobriquet is also bestowed on Simon Rosenberg, a dark-horse candidate for DNC chairman who heads the New Democrat Network. Although Rosenberg's roots are in centrist politics, he has ties to Dean and has been arguing since the election that Democrats need a thorough reorganization.
True, organizational obsessions are often linked to ideological concerns. But the thirst for a 50-state Democratic organization transcends ideology. As Ken Rudin reported on National Public Radio, the words "50-state strategy" tripped off the tongues of Dean and Rosenberg -- but also of such party veterans as former Denver mayor Wellington Webb, former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard and former representative Martin Frost of Texas. Clinton administration veteran Harold Ickes also laid heavy stress on building state parties, while Donnie Fowler of South Carolina spoke for beleaguered Southern Democrats.
Thus, even before Democrats get to the question of ideology, they will have to decide what their party needs most. Is the new party chairman's primary job to be public spokesman? Or is it to move the Democrats up the organizational and technological curve, to rebuild atrophied party structures, to keep asking: What Would Karl Do?
postchat@aol.com
Face facts: from the 1930s to the 1980s the Democrats had an enormous, millions-strong army of union members who were paid to electioneer for them in almost every county in America.
With the collapse of private industry unions over the past 25 years, their "grassroots" organization is dying. In the meantime, the Republicans have gone to the churches, which probably aren't disappearing anytime soon.
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