It's obvious that Rove is still in the saddle at the national level -- the latest example being the corporate media's obsession with comments made at the King funeral.
Less well-known is that Rove is still working assiduously to promote Bush at the state level.
Here in NY, state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer/Saratoga County) is a pork-loving pol who is worried that the Spitzer-Clinton tsunami in November will swamp his tenuously held majority.
Bruno recently responded to a press-conference question with a Murtha-like statement that was widely viewed as an attempt to appeal to moderate voters who are sick of the war.
Bush's Brain didn't like that at all, as you'll see below.
The New York Post, a Murdoch rag that is the most conservative major newspaper in the state, ran an interesting, if expletive-deleted,
story yesterday about Rove's interest in Bruno's comments about the war.
President Bush's top adviser contacted Gov. Pataki personally to rip Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno for comments that the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq.
An angry Karl Rove called Pataki over the weekend, a source close to the governor said.
"They were angered, looking for insight as to why he would say that, and wanted to know how best to approach," the source said. "They weren't plotting to take him out. They were just angry and wanted some insights into how to best deal with it."
The Post has the best Republican sources in Albany, so this tale of an angry Rove berating Pataki has considerable credibility.
But Rove has a tin ear for NY politics. Pataki and Bruno are not as close as they were when they conspired with eminence noir Al D'Amato to stage a coup against the prior Senate Majority Leader in 1995.
For brevity's sake, I won't go into all the details of the Pataki-Bruno break-up. But the fact is that Pataki is an unpopular lame duck who has less political power than Bruno, so Rove can swear all he wants at Pataki, but it will have little influence on Bruno, whose No. 1 priority is to remain Senate Majority Leader.
Bruno lost three seats in 2004, and with Spitzer and Clinton likely to win with 60-plus percent, is in real danger of losing four more and the majority.
So Bruno is tacking to the center, well aware of polls that show 60-plus percent of New Yorkers opposed to the war.
Rove's bullying will not work in NY, and will only serve to further fracture a weak Republican Party here.
As his puppet said in another context, "Bring it on."