No Shortage of Rove Sound Bites

Sure, he's resigning from the White House. But that doesn't mean he's going quietly. I hope this isn't a preview of things to come; I could certainly use less yammering from Karl in the future.

First, in the Wall Street Journal interview in which his departure was revealed, Karl Rove tipped the GOP hand pretty hard:

"I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob."

The Washington Post's Monica Hesse launched into a full-scale academic analysis of What It All Means When A Guy Like Karl Rove Uses A Word Like "Mob", and she did a very competent, thorough job of examining the history of the word. She describes it as a "social slur," and that's exactly what it is. While Republicans decry the elitist left, they continue a class war they've been engaged in since Reagan took over in which rich people get richer because they deserve to and if the poor really wanted things like health care, they'd make more money.

Rove's referral to people that might want him to leave as "the mob" should be indicative for you of how Republicans think, if the "with us or against us" line wasn't enough proof. You don't have a be a political scientist with a strong background in Strauss to know that these guys, from Cheney on down to Wolfowitz and Perle, believed that those that rule deserve to rule, and that everyone else is, in short, the mob. Karl Rove is the guy that built the electoral house they've occupied for going on seven years, and I'm sure he views you and me the same way: as the teeming masses, ready to riot because we just don't know what's good for us.

Lately, when he isn't trying to put you in your place with elitist language, he has been commenting on Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that he would mount up the mighty warhorse Spin-nir and start trying to shape conservative opinion about any number of Democratic nominees. The reaction to Rove's outbursts among the Democrats running for president have been, as they say, expected:

“It sounds like Mr. Rove and Senator Obama are reading off the same set of talking points,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Obama’s advisers scoffed and said Mr. Rove was aiding and abetting a Clinton nomination because Republicans believed that she was too divisive to be elected.

Rove is crafty, and he is perhaps even more of a figure to Democrats than Hillary Clinton is to Republicans, I suppose. He is probably best ignored. I'm sure that if we all stopped looking at him long enough, he would unfurl his night-black bat wings and...

OK. He probably doesn't have bat wings. But he certainly isn't dumb. His language and his spin and his attempts to direct message for the Republican Party will no doubt continue long after he's moved out of the West Wing.