Rove Speaks

Mike Allen interviews Karl Rove and -- crikey! -- is this guy in denial or what?:

"Iraq mattered," Rove says. "But it was more frustration than it was an explicit call for withdrawal. If this was a get-out-now call for withdrawal, then Lamont would not have been beaten by Lieberman. Iraq does play a role, but not the critical, central role."

First of all, a Democrat beat another Democrat in Connecticut -- and Rove takes comfort in that? But more importantly he ignores the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the room: twenty-five thousand US casualties, six hundred thousand Iraqi casualties, a war-wrapped-in-a-lie-turned-into-a-quagmire and somehow that doesn't play a central role in his party's historic defeat? Hel-lo?

"My job is not to be a prognosticator," he said. "My job is not to go out there and wring my hands and say, 'We're going to lose.' I'm looking at the data and seeing if I can figure out, Where can we be? I told the President, 'I don't know where this is going to end up. But I see our way clear to Republican control.' "

Rove is a Texan accustomed to playing poker. He's been bluffing for a long time and the traditional media has folded each time the stakes were high. But this time he couldn't play the Iraq card and he got his ass handed to him.

"I see this as much more of a transient, passing thing," he said. "The Republican Party remains at its core a small-government, low-tax, limit-spending, traditional-values, strong-defense party. I see the power of the ideas, even in a tough year." He added that he has "fundamental confidence in the power of the underlying agenda of this President," and cited fighting the war on terror, entitlement reform, energy, tax cuts, immigration reform, No Child Left Behind reauthorization, democracy agenda in the Middle East, reducing trade barriers, spending restraint and legal reform.

Honestly, if I were Rove, I'd say the same thing. But the problem for this crew is that we're six years into their song and dance. Everyone has had enough. We know now that we cannot believe anything they say. We know that is only matters what they do. And their record is pretty bad. Bad enough to have soured a large portion of the electorate on their platform.

Rove goes on to spout a ton of historical statistics about midterm elections, as if to lessen the impact of what really happened here. And/But no matter how many "averages" he wants to point to, very few historical analogies match this one -- in one day, the sitting President's party lost control of an entire branch of the government. That's only happened once before in my lifetime -- and I go back to the first Eisenhower administration.

Rove is an enthusiastic historian, but even he has trouble coming up with a parallel for this wild week. "We may look back and see this as a unique expression," he said.

Ya think??