Rove isn't that smart, and thinking that he is serves to paralyze

[jpgray]

"Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do." -- U.S. Grant

Good advice. Once you fear an opponent's actions to the point that all you do is prepare for his/her preparations, you give up much of the initiative and the chance for aggressive, offensive action of your own. Being exclusively reactive is what got the Democrats in vast amounts of trouble during the past few elections--the party seemed to fail to recognize that the Republicans set debate points to win elections, not really to debate the issue. Gay marriage is a great example. Republicans knew that a socially conservative stance on this would net plenty of electoral hay, so they ballooned an admittedly very important issue to a place of unique prominence, forcing Democrats into an impossible position--the right position to take in this case (supporting equal rights) was not popular. The Democratic strategy in essence was to retreat from support for equal rights into a position that tried to both do the right thing and stop any ballot bleeding, and of course failed on both counts. In my view the proper strategy would have been to not budge from a position in favor of equal rights, but bring into the debate our -own- impossible predicaments for the Republicans. Republicans -cannot- retreat from support for the elite, corporate welfare and the like, and thus Democratic issues like raising the minimum wage or abolishing corporate welfare for offshorers would be great examples of forcing the Republicans into similar no-win situations. Happily for us, support for gay marriage is and was the right thing to do, whereas backing corporate graft is beyond the pale--in other words if it ever came down to a real battle of values, we'd win. If, however, we only respond to debates about values on Republican terms, naturally we will lose because they will only choose to debate those "values" which provide them a stance squarely on the heavy side of a ballot box. Again speaking of the past few, Republicans in leadership positions don't give a shit about gay marriage really--it's not a life-altering issue for them. But it gets votes, and therefore they give it prominence via special state ballot intiatives, etc.

Anyway, the connection is this: believing Rove is some master puppetmaster that can control the flow of news disables you. It justifies a total lack of action because any possible response is something Rove could have conceivably predicted. Every possible stance on any possible issue has its flaws which could be conceivably picked apart. It's good to be cautious, but the problem with preparing for superhuman political skill from Rove is that it essentially -gives- him that skill, whether he has it or not, because the effect has been achieved--we worry about what he's doing instead of worrying about what we're going to do. And it's very difficult to win if you do that all the time.

[Mythsaje]

1. K & R

I agree. Somehow some people have granted him an almost supernatural ability to manipulate everything around him. Including US.

It's a bit pathetic, really.

[LeftCoast]

2. It looks like only a very small % of DUers believe Rove's behind it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2292982

[jpgray]

3. Unfortunately this is just the latest and most extreme instance

DU has had a long history of assigning Rove full dominion over the news cycle/all political events in this country.

[LeftCoast]

5. I dunno...before I did that poll, I thought a large minority of DUers

believed Rove was behind this. In fact, it's just a very vocal minority. It could also be argued that trying to imbue Rove with an aura of invincibility wouldn't be a half-bad troll strategy. Note: I know that there are good and decent liberals who believe Rove is behind a lot of stuff, I'm just pointing out one possible scenario for some of the comments.

[jpgray]

6. No I agree--those posts stand out, and therefore seem more prevalent

A calm reasonable even-handed examination of why the news cycle hits something the way it does might not stick in my memory as much as one declaring it to be some elaborate Rovian scheme. But this seems like a good time to take issue with the idea, especially since Bernie Ward is putting it out there.

edit: And I don't mean to imply many or most DUers believe this. But enough do that it concerns me.

[LeftCoast]

8. Good point

I was thinking about it strictly in the context of DU.

[Raksha]

4. K & R. You make some very good points.

What you've said here gets to the nitty-gritty of what "framing" is all about. I'm involved in a discussion of framing on another forum. It's a private topic (no freepers allowed!) and I'd like to repost it there--with a link, of course.

[jpgray]

7. Feel free

Just some late night ramblings.

[pa28]

9. What a perfect quote to summarize your post.

The secret to Rove's success is a complicit media. Not genius. A media willing to make R.W. talking points into "the subject" and marginalize everything else. That kind of help can make anyone look a master puppeteer.

Remember the 2004 election; even with the media harping 24/7 on Kerry as a "flip-flopper" the message was weak and he switched over to "Massachusetts Liberal" at the last second.

Remember the Osama Bin-Laden issue; Democrats became paralyzed with this creeping fear Karl Rove would pull Osama out of his hat in October. So paralyzed, in fact, that Kerry only mentioned this colossal failure only once to my recollection. We should have hammered the hell out of Bush over this but we were too frozen by this irrational Rove paralysis.

[farmbo]

10. Great point...Some DUers have actually attributed Bugger gate to Rove.

Rove from his Lair: "Humm...I'm a little worried about this Woodward book...we need to change the subject...humm...I've got it! We'll let it out that Foley's been using the internet to troll for boy pages and that Hasert and Boenner knew it all along! Brilliant!"

[sendero]

12. It's all nonsense..

...as if a book, ANY BOOK, ever had any real impact on American politics.

Rove is nothing more than a dirty-trickster, a social reject trying to take his revenge on society, and a manipulator who's 15 minutes are about up.

[jpgray]

13. I don't see any scenario where Republicans would want this to happen

And yet, this is suggested in many threads. Go figure.

[LoZoccolo]

11. For some reason I keep thinking of this in relation to DU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29SuuEKztPc

With respect to things like Diebold machines, Rove, why we don't win this or that election, etcetera.

I think stuff like what we're talking about actually has a lot to do with the fact that DU is largely a community of people who think writing messages on the Internet is activism.

[Fiendish Thingy]

14. Bullies don't have to be smart...just effective. n/t