Karl Rove's America -- we just live in it

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We've reached a tipping point in the Karl Rove scandal. Although it's important to determine his criminal culpability (if any), it has become just one of many issues that are on the table.

In other words, I don't know if Rove has committed a crime (and neither do you). But perhaps the conventional wisdom is now this: that we live in a different America because of him and it's one where we're all worse off.

Krugman nails it:

Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What exactly are his pioneering discoveries?

[W]e're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

For Rove (more than Bush), 9/11 was his defining moment:

Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.

Sidebar: those of you who wonder what stake the CIA has in Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation, there it is.

For example, many Bush apologists suggest that Plame really wasn't a covert operative; others respond that Fitzgerald wouldn't have stayed with the case for two years if she wasn't. Surprise! It's the CIA that gets to say who is and who isn't.

Let Krugman continue:

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

Rove says Earth is flat; Democrats disagree.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

Good question. And don't bother answering that "they did it first," regardless of your party affiliation.

The only relevant question is, "Who did it last?"