Not the Legacy Rove Expected

Not the Legacy Rove Expected

by Mark Luedtke

If we could bottle the venom the left spits toward Karl Rove and turn it into fuel, oil would be obsolete. We'd have free energy for a decade at least. When Karl Rove announced his resignation from the White House, liberals generated significant new global warming with hot air and hotter electrons. The vast majority of commentaries ran high on emotion and low on information.

According to liberals, any issue that Karl Rove advocated was subsequently defined as a wedge issue, a term with no meaning. Every issue has multiple sides, and when an advocate takes any side, it divides the advocate from the people taking other sides. Karl Rove had opinions on plenty of issues, and by definition, that divided him from people with different opinions, just like every other person who takes a position on an issue.

Liberals condemn Rove for his divisiveness, but last time I checked, there are 2 sides to every divide. Trying to blame Rove for divisiveness is really just a way of whining and blaming Rove because he isn't a liberal. But if we examine the major policies of the Bush administration, policies one would assume are advocated by Rove, it's obvious that in historical terms, Bush is a liberal. In 2000, George Bush's major platform planks could have come directly from the Democrats' platform of the previous 20 years.

Bush-Rove's major domestic program was a huge socialist program called “No Child Left Behind”, a spending program added to the already bloated bureaucracy of the Department of Eduction. Ronald Reagan ran on a platform of abolishing the Department of Education, but Bush-Rove co-opted their policy from Democrats. The liberal response to Bush's new socialist education program was that it didn't spend enough. It's never enough spending for liberals until they control every dime every one of us makes.

Bush-Rove's other major domestic program was the prescription drug benefit for seniors, Medicare Part D. Faced with the impending bankruptcy of our government from Medicare and Social Security entitlements, Bush-Rove pushed through the biggest new entitlement since LBJ, making the problem even worse. Democrats largely supported the measure, though they complained it didn't have price controls. Despite their initial support, today Democrats decry the program as a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies. Who drove that wedge?

Bush's foreign policy was intended to be humble, and he promised no nation-building. That didn't sit well with liberal elites, who were pushing for regime change in Iraq at the time. But after 9/11, Bush-Rove implemented the policy of regime change in Iraq championed by Democrats during the Clinton administration with the overwhelming support of both parties and the public. But in the tradition of LBJ, Bush tried to fight a politically correct war. He restricted our troops with rules of engagement that kept them from being as effective as they should have been, and he failed to implement a strategy for success for 4 years despite the overwhelming evidence the initial strategy wasn't working.

Rove also supports amnesty for illegal aliens, another liberal policy opposed by the vast majority of Americans. It took a grass-roots revolt to stop the Bush-Rove-Democrat-Republican plan to legalize 12-20 million illegal aliens and invite 60 million more to illegally break into our country.

I think liberals are just jealous of Rove. He stole their socialist policies and enacted them when Democrats had been unable to do so themselves. Rove is the architect behind more destructive socialist spending than liberals have been able to force down Americans' throats since LBJ. Because of jealousy of Rove's success, liberals have blindly opposed every action taken by the Bush administration and have manufactured phony controversies like the Plame and US Attorney non-affairs.

Rove has left a powerful legacy on America, but certainly not the one he intended, and not the one either liberals, conservatives or their agents in the press would have us believe.

Rove proved conclusively that Republicans and conservatives are lying when they claim to be for smaller government. Conservatives elected George Bush with full understanding of his new socialist programs and entitlements. Many conservatives have since tried to absolve themselves of responsibility, feigning ignorance, but they can't because they elected Bush with eyes wide open. Conservatives' and Republicans' claim of smaller government means about $1 less than whatever Democrats want. America is founded on libertarian principles described by Thomas Jefferson, and the majority of Americans (contrary to most news coverage) won't stand for socialism once they recognize it. Rove ended the Reagan Revolution, and Americans are angry.

Americans are realizing that despite all the ginned-up animosity, the 2 parties are nearly identical, fighting over tiny differences. Civil wars tend to be more violent than other wars because the 2 combatants are so similar. Same concept. Because both parties are fighting for their own power instead of fighting for freedom and America's welfare, Americans are expressing record distrust and dissatisfaction with government. Every power government takes, every dollar it spends, means less freedom for citizens. Hopefully Americans will unite against the 2 parties and break their destructive grip on our country, because both parties are selling Americans down the river for their own power.