Recently, on
Achenblog there was this:
I will give Rove the benefit of the doubt and assume his words had some kind of broader, less ridiculous context. Rove knows as well as anyone that liberals are not firing IEDs at our soldiers. He also is enough of a student of history to know that any attempt to muzzle your political opponents for national security reasons (the comfort-to-the-enemy argument) is the first step toward ... wait, let me think of a moderate term that won't get me in trouble like Durbin...okay, toward Stalinism.
My guess is that, as part of some double-secret triple-backloop political strategy, Rove realized he needed to cause a distraction. He informed the president that the poll numbers were looking bad, or that Social Security privatization is about as likely as the resurgence of alchemy. The president said, "Karl, go out there and say something really dumb." By now you should know that nothing happens in the White House political shop except for very calculated reasons. Rove is a red herring. Keep your eye on the big fish.
To beg the question, if Rove is the red herring, what is the big fish?
I don't think this helps the president's agenda at all. Calling Democrats you need help from to get social security passed and to break the impasse on the Bolton nomination wimps who aide the enemy is not exactly going to make Blanche Lincoln or Pryor jump up and down and say yes, I will make a Social Security compromise happen. In fact, there's been pretty much a legislative yawn in the days after the comments, so scratch out a legislative red herring.
My theory is it all comes back to elections, which is the thing that Rove is good at (though not as great as others have labeled him). This is high recruitment season, and if you read between the lines, roll call seems to indicate that Democrats are having a much better time recruiting than their GOP counter-parts.
Democrats have a clear edge when it comes to early candidate recruitment this cycle -- with Pennsylvania Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.'s (D) decision to challenge Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) their crowning achievement.
And the National Journal's Chuck Todd recently listed Democrats as in contention to retake the Senate, which six months ago would have gotten you laughted out of parties. Why? To quote:
With at least six legitimate targets for the Democrats, the Senate is officially in play for the first time this cycle. We're not naïve. Minnesota and Maryland won't be easy for the party to defend. Add North Dakota and Democrats have their work cut out for them. But on the plus side, Republicans haven't found A-list recruits in places like Nebraska, Washington and Florida. While those three seats won't be easy for the Democrats to defend, things could be much worse.
So, then, what would be the message that Rove is sending out? I think he's saying that despite the poll numbers and the lack of progress, unless the Democrats can resolve the inner-party bickering on National Security and Iraq, we won't be able to win elections in 2006. So go ahead and join up. In other words, this wasn't directed at Democrats or voters at all. This was directed at Republicans, telling them why they should run. This was telling Capito why she should challenge Byrd, etc.
Its a reasonable point. The conflict within the party of Iraq swallowed Kerry alive. The party needs to decide where it stands on Iraq and offer a competing strategy. Are we getting out, and if so, how and when? Are we staying in, and if so, what's our plan, after all, its hard to criticize Bush when we don't have one. Where's our exit-strategy and what do we believe, because nobody seems to really know. And we need everyone on board. No circular firing squads. Not an easy task.
Now, I'm not saying that we should announce our post-war plan now. Quite the opposite. I think that we need to wait till much closer to the election to be more aggressive with our message. However, I think its worth noting that Rove has a point. Democrats have a deep inner disagreement over the war. The only thing they really do agree on is that Bush mishandled it. Our party is not going to be able to pick up steam on the National Security issue until we're all on the same page. What remains to be seen is whether national security will remain an electoral trump card. Rove is banking on it, but then, Rove has very little else to bank on....