Years ago, I discovered that when someone is accusing you of a lot of mopery and dopery that really doesn't fit you at all, nine times out of ten, it's because that particular form of nastiness that you're being painted with is their preferred form of mis-behaviour in circumstances, and that - well, that's the way they behave, so you must be doing the same sort of thing. Of course, they're clever and can hide it, but you're a dope. And in their way.
I think of all the slogans that Bush threw up or stole from people in the 2000 election, such as "uniter not a divider" and "compassionate conservative", when he was neither. Sure sounded good, though, didn't it?
Karl Rove's 'genius' was in doing stuff like that.
When he could snake-oil his way through with stuff that that, he would, but he'd also do stuff like the whispering campaign against John McCain that said 'you know that kid of McCain's that is black? Well, he knocked up some 'ho, and that's the result.' Of course, the truth, that dark-skinned Bridget McCain was adopted from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa's people didn't matter. The idea was to do anything to get electoral victory.
Rove knew how to go after electoral wins the most powerful and ruthless way possible, and he had no scruples in the process. The problem was that in doing so, and in trying to set up a 'permanent Republican majority', he poured everything down to them-or-us power politics. You might win one through that method, but you can't build any sort of real governance with that. It's a system of bullying, largely, and not of how to actually run things in governance.
Yes, the dog can chase a car, and he might catch it, but he can't drive it.
This is not a system that can last or be useful for long, because you will end up having real problems that don't care about the polls or TV PR biting you in the butt.
So when real problems arose from the blow-back of the Bush / neocon / theocon policies, he didn't have answers. He had some PR, photo ops, and 'who-are-you-going-to-believe, me-or-your-traitorous-eyes' routines. He managed to scare the hell out of people, but he wanted power without the least intention of doing anything constructive with it. He was playing an enormous game as hard as he could, and he didn't care about the people any more than you or I would care for a piece in a cheap chess set.
But, as noted below, that was really the point of it all. Power begetting power, without any real responsible thought as to how it was to be used. Some people get into political life and government because they want to do something for the common good. Others just like the idea of getting to be the person giving the orders.
"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."
-George Orwell, 1984