Karl Rove Comes to Fayetteville
I was blessed to be able to attend the luncheon where Senior Presidential Advisor Karl Rove spoke.
Asa Hutchinson spoke as well. It was the first time I had heard him in person for a while. He is always going to be better at projecting dignity than warm fuzzies, but he keeps getting better on all accounts.
Rove started off the talk by praising Hutchinson effusively. Then he turned to policy. What was the first thing he started talking about? The need for getting tougher on illegal immigration! This is the man who reportedly told Congressman Tom Tancredo to "never darken the door of the White House again" because Tancredo wanted them to get serious about controlling illegal immigration.
This brings me to Moore's truism on this issue: Sixty days before the election, everybody in this business sounds like Jim Holt when they talk about illegal immigration, even the ones who will call him an extremist for it six months after the election.
The crowd sat in stunned silence after the first "get tough on illegals" applause line. After he kept doing it they realized that it was now OK to admit you want to get tough on illegals in front of Karl Rove and they applauded loudly. Eurasia was the enemy, Eurasia has always been the enemy.
Rove also waxed Holt-like on tax cuts and resulting growth they have helped produce in the economy. He did not mention spending!
Karl Rove did a great job of defending the Patriot Act. So much so that I had to do a little web research to help remind myself why I am opposed to many of its provisions.
(continued- click WEDNESDAY below and scroll down for rest of article, or if sent straight here just scroll down)
Asa Hutchinson spoke as well. It was the first time I had heard him in person for a while. He is always going to be better at projecting dignity than warm fuzzies, but he keeps getting better on all accounts.
Rove started off the talk by praising Hutchinson effusively. Then he turned to policy. What was the first thing he started talking about? The need for getting tougher on illegal immigration! This is the man who reportedly told Congressman Tom Tancredo to "never darken the door of the White House again" because Tancredo wanted them to get serious about controlling illegal immigration.
This brings me to Moore's truism on this issue: Sixty days before the election, everybody in this business sounds like Jim Holt when they talk about illegal immigration, even the ones who will call him an extremist for it six months after the election.
The crowd sat in stunned silence after the first "get tough on illegals" applause line. After he kept doing it they realized that it was now OK to admit you want to get tough on illegals in front of Karl Rove and they applauded loudly. Eurasia was the enemy, Eurasia has always been the enemy.
Rove also waxed Holt-like on tax cuts and resulting growth they have helped produce in the economy. He did not mention spending!
Karl Rove did a great job of defending the Patriot Act. So much so that I had to do a little web research to help remind myself why I am opposed to many of its provisions.
(continued- click WEDNESDAY below and scroll down for rest of article, or if sent straight here just scroll down)
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Wednesday, October 11, 2006
7 Comments:
Some things in it, like Roving wiretaps, needed to be done as a part of changing technology. Other things it does are a threat to our fourth amendment rights. There is probably already a file on me so I might as well admit I am getting to the place where I am willing to risk being less safe in order to be more free.
Rove was less compelling on Iraq. For one thing, he had great difficulty naming the enemy. He never said it was "Islamofascim" or "Radical Islam". He described it as the "war on terror", which is silly. You can't wage war on a tactic. It is like declaring "war on two-pronged envelopment". You have to wage war on people who are out to destroy you, not a tactic that they use. How can we defeat our enemy if our leaders are too PC to even name it?
He did say "Osama Bin Laden" was the enemy. But that guy had never even been to Iraq as far a I know. Iraq was not run by an Islamofascist, but a garden variety thug. In fact, he was using his brutal methods to kill some of the very same people that we now have to kill- if we insist on hanging around running the place.
Rove wanted us to imagine the great impact it would have on the mid-east if there was a functioning democracy there. I say you cannot impose good government on people who will not respect one anothers rights, who have an anti-judeochristian view of reality.
I am right, Rove is wrong. Count me as a "cut and runner" from that mission impossible. Not a "cut and runner" from confronting Islamofacism mind you, but from our unwinnable misadventure in Iraq. Our troops have won every type of victory in Iraq that you can win by military means. Imposing good government on people who lack the virtue to sustain it is not one of those things.
Iraq was a diversion in the true war on Islamofascim. We have 10 times the troops there as we do in Afganistan- which we actually had cause to invade. Let's move em to Afaganistan and hunt the last Taliban down like dogs, then get out of there too. I don't mean after we impose a functioning Constitutional Republic. A strong man will be just fine, so long as he keeps his own crazies down.
Will we be leaving Iraq to the terrorists? I doubt it. Most of the guys killing our troops would never dream of going across the ocean to kill Americans in this country. They are only killing Americans because we are in their country, like I would kill them if they were occupying mine.
Governments of other Islamic coutries are going to be threatend by our attempt to impose democracy on people. What they should be threatened by is the assurance that they will be dead if they harbor terrorists who strike our interests. That is what will motivate them to cooperate with us, not the promise of democracy.
I respect Karl Rove as a strategic genius in a business where I am only a neophyte. That I grant you. But it is unseemly for a guy who never served himself, and can't even bring himself to name the true enemy, to file someone like me away as a "cut and runner" because I don't want to throw good lives and more money into that UN project in imposing democracy. I just want our military to defeat our real enemies.
Dido from an Army vet.
Rove is pure un-adulterrated evil.
He should be drawn and quartered.
Bush sucks!
What intelligence you've brought to the discussion. You simply must be a liberal.
Intelligent discussion here? You've got to be kidding!
Yes, I am a Liberal and damned proud of it.
Please watch your language, and your incoherence.
I think you've unintentionally proved the opposite point, razorback. Rove & Bush DON'T want immigration laws enforced. Had Asa! pleased his superiors on this issue while he was at the DHS, he WOULD HAVE been promoted. The fact that he wasn't is to his credit.
Post a Comment
<< Home