Karl who? White House downplays Rove's role (LA Times)

[Hepburn]

WASHINGTON -- Not to be "ungenerous or self-centered," said White House Counselor Ed Gillespie, but he thinks some people overestimate Karl Rove's importance. After all, Gillespie pointed out, during the 2004 presidential campaign he headed the Republican National Committee, the heart of the party's operations. And he talked to Rove only "from time to time"

Another White House official, asked what it would mean to lose the legendary strategist, whose departure was announced Monday, recalled that Rove had started the staff's "ice-cream Fridays."

As one of the most powerful and controversial presidential advisors in modern history heads out the door, the White House is engaged in an unusual game of double spin: While President Bush bear-hugged Rove and showered him with praise in a South Lawn ceremony, officials like Gillespie quietly began to whittle down Rove's image as the man who played a key role in almost every major decision of the Bush era.

If all that sounds contradictory, it's just politics:

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-bush15aug15,1,4966130.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

The WH is distancing itself from KKKarl and downplaying his role in the Bush Admin? IMO, something is up...and I smell the Abramoff scandal.

[Bitwit1234]

1. When all all the crap rove is responsible for hits the fan

republicans, including the white house want to cut the umbilical cord.

[Hepburn]

2. I am smelling this more than I am thinking that ....

...he left to engineer some Repig Prez campaign. The look on his face and the being near tears...IMO, something is up and I truly hope that something leads to him taking a MAJOR perp walk.

[rodeodance]

3. Karl leaving the WH does put a damper on the investigations--I do think

the article is right about that.



.....A posse of Democratic congressional investigators has been pushing hard for evidence that Rove went too far in politicizing the federal government, including the possibility that he improperly injected politics into the decision to fire several U.S. attorneys. The administration's own Office of Special Counsel also is investigating Rove's activities.

Though those inquiries are scheduled to go forward, they may lose some of their steam with Rove's departure from government. And the smaller Rove's overall role in the administration and Republican affairs is made to appear, the less important any inquiry into his past activities is likely to become.

"If the person you've been focusing on now leaves and goes to Texas, what do you do? That's the question facing Democrats at this point," said David Winston, a GOP pollster who has advised Capitol Hill Republicans.

[rodeodance]

5. Rove said, he is Moby Dick -- t

Even Rove has joined in the game. On Monday, the day his resignation was formally announced, he ridiculed journalists who dubbed him "Bush's brain" and said they built him up to "diminish" the president's abilities. But in the same discussion with reporters aboard Air Force One, Rove boasted that his office was just 15 steps away from the Oval Office.

And in discussing the multifaceted struggle between the Democratic Congress and the Bush White House, Rove said, he is Moby Dick -- the mythic white whale at the center of Herman Melville's epic novel -- "and we've got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Capt. Ahab."

Though he praised Bush and his leadership lavishly in other parts of the conversation with reporters, when Rove described Democrats as would-be captains of the whaling ship and himself as their quarry, there was no major role for Bush.

The same effort to acknowledge Rove's impact while also downplaying it was evident in other senior officials' comments. They acknowledged his strengths as a political strategist while insisting he was eminently replaceable and not the dominant presence often portrayed.

[shain from kane]

6. From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.

[shain from kane]

4. Ice cream Fridays? Eisenhower on Nixon in 1960 ---

From the internets (Wikipedia) ---

In the 1960 election to choose his successor, Eisenhower endorsed his own Vice President, Republican Richard Nixon against Democrat John F. Kennedy. However, he only campaigned for Nixon in the campaign's final days and even did Nixon some harm when asked by reporters on TV to list one of Nixon's policy ideas he had adopted, replying "give me a week, I might think of one, I don't remember". Kennedy's campaign used the quote in one of their campaign commercials. Nixon lost narrowly to Kennedy.