Posted on 05/31/2007 8:53:31 AM PDT by kellynla
Karl Rove’s political strategy for President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign was "maniacally dumb,” declares Newt Gingrich – who says the right can’t retain power if it alienates the center.
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for The New Yorker magazine, the former House Speaker said Rove left Bush with "no political capital.”
Gingrich observed: "All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote.”
The Bush campaign failed to wage a campaign based on ideology, said Gingrich, and instead of suggesting that Kerry was "to the left of Ted Kennedy,” it focused on attacking Kerry’s war record.
Gingrich has gotten heat of late from some conservatives for reaching out to center-right voters, Goldberg notes. But Gingrich said he wants to bring the center into a coalition with the right "because I want to give the right power. The right can have power only by being allied with the center.”
Failure to recognize that was Rove’s mistake in 2004, according to Gingrich, who feels Republicans risk alienating "America’s natural majority.”
The GOP’s only hope of holding on to the White House in 2008 is to nominate a candidate who runs against Bush, just as Nicolas Sarkozy won France’s presidency by "making his own president, Jacques Chirac, his virtual opponent,” said Gingrich.
Goldberg writes that Gingrich "says the Bush administration has become a Republican version of the Jimmy Carter presidency, when nothing seemed to go right.”
Gingrich also warned: "When you have the collapse of the Republican Party, you have an immediate turn toward the Democrats, not because the Democrats are offering anything better, but on a ‘not them’ basis. And if you end up in a 2008 campaign between ‘them’ and ‘not them,’ ‘not them’ is going to win.”
According to Rove, if folks are for enforcing the immigration laws, we are bigots!
:::::
Yes, we know where Bush stands, and therefore where Rove stands on open borders and ILLEGAL immigration. The amount of damage, and the multitude of costs to the REAL AMERICAN CITIZEN, are an atrocity upon this country.
Did he really say that?????
Pretty dumb thing to say.
Of course I'll be the first to say I was only a fair weathered friend of Rove's anyway. The magnificent b*stard stuff went out the windows in 2006 with me and many others who started thinking rightly or wrongly that Rove just got lucky, there wasn't any strategerie at all.
Where's our Lee Atwater?
Of course this poll pretty much blows Karl Rove’s “bigot” accusation right out of the Rio Grande!
Comprehensive Immigration Reform II
(70% likely Latino voters support border security first)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1841546/posts
Strategery!!! All hail Magnificent Maniacally Dumb Bastard!
“Did he really say that?????”
Yes he did, Hayworth was being interviewed on the radio when he told the story of going to the WH to see Pres. Bush and Hayworth ran into Rove before meeting with Bush when Rove told him “you just have a problem with brown people” in regards to Hayworth’s postion on illegals and border security.
Newt Gingrich says “Boo” and magically Rove is an idiot?
Gingrich is following his own strategy, he says quite plainly what he thinks that Republicans in 2008 should do to “win”.
That being:
Attack President Bush and everything that is Bushian, including the “Bast*ard” formerely known as magnificent.
That way a candidate gives people an option, INOW throw Bush overboard by attacking him and disparaging his record over 8 years.
Rove has acquired such a bad public perception among the chattering class that to attack him, is to court good press for a candidate.
Newt Gingrich says “Boo” and magically Rove is an idiot?
Gingrich is following his own strategy, he says quite plainly what he thinks that Republicans in 2008 should do to “win”.
That being:
Attack President Bush and everything that is Bushian, including the “Bast*ard” formerely known as magnificent.
That way a candidate gives people an option, INOW throw Bush overboard by attacking him and disparaging his record over 8 years.
Rove has acquired such a bad public perception among the chattering class that to attack him, is to court good press for a candidate.
“The Bush campaign failed to wage a campaign based on ideology, said Gingrich,”
of course....they didn’t DARE to reveal 2 generations of Bush idealogy.....but it is going to be unmistakably revealed during the last year of baby Bush......America as we have loved it will never recover from it....
Whatever, Newt, it worked. Bush only received the most votes ever.
But it was close, and had the Democrats been able to find a good candidate, Bush may have lost.
Uh, but Newt, Bush won.
Right on.....kill ‘em dead...JK
Whatever, Newt, it worked.
//////////
What works from one year to the next is different. Newt is saying that the French guy’s strategery also worked.
“Gingrich observed: “All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote.”
Which you can credit to the Swifties. OF course, King George let the Swifties be fined 250k for their efforts.
Screw W and the GOP.
“Whatever, Newt, it worked. Bush only received the most votes ever.”
Bush won the election & reelection but because of his failure to enforce the immigration laws, secure the borders and deport ALL illegals & foreign muzzies;
Bush may have not only irreparably fractured the GOP but may have flushed our sovereignty down the Rio Grande AND left this country WIDE OPEN for more muzzie terrorist attacks!
That’s a pretty high price to pay for winning a couple of presidential elections wouldn’t you say...
Gingrich has a case of the Kerry “I was for it before I was against it.”
I don’t find much in Newts history that doesn’t show he’s been behind the Rove/Bush agenda all along, until recently.
He was 100% behind the amnesty,etc. until it fell out of favor with the public.
In a letter to the WSJ signed with LINDA CHAVEZ, Grover Norquist, Tamar Jacoby, Newt Gingrich, Cesar Conda and others he promoted Bush/Kennedy Amnesty as the only workable approach.
snip] The Wall Street Journal February 6, 2004 Welcome to America
President Bush has proposed a new legal path to work in the U.S. through a temporary worker program that will match willing workers with willing employers. We applaud the president and believe his approach holds great promise to reduce illegal immigration and establish a humane, orderly, and economically sensible approach to migration that will aid homeland security and free up border-security assets to focus on genuine threats. The president has shown courage by calling on Congress to place reality over rhetoric and recognize that those already working here outside the law are unlikely to leave. Congress can fulfill its role by establishing sufficient increases in legal immigration and paths to permanent residence to enable more workers to stay, assimilate, and become part of America.
Immigrants are crucial to our competitiveness and future labor and economic growth, as well as our military strength. Our country’s welcoming attitude to immigrants will permit the U.S. to grow and prosper, as the populations of many other nations stagnate and decline.
Co-authored by Stuart Anderson, Jeff Bell, Linda Chavez, Larry Cirignano, Cesar V. Conda, Francis Fukuyama, Richard Gilder, Newt Gingrich, Ed Goeas, Tamar Jacoby, Jack Kemp, Steve Moore, Grover Norquist, Richard W. Rahn and Malcolm Wallop
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1836137/posts?page=65#65
I hate repeating myself so check out post #16
However, that does not negate the fact that Newt is wrong on this. The election strategy resulted in a win for Bush, so it obviously wasn’t ‘maniacally dumb’.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.