Thought Theater

Fineman: Rove's Revamped GOP Strategy genre: Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

There is a good article by Howard Fineman on the strategy plans of Karl Rove for the upcoming midterm elections. You can read the entire article here. The big question that remains is whether Rove will have the opportunity to execute his plan or if he will be derailed by an indictment from Grand Jury and Patrick Fitzgerald. See prior postings about Karl Rove's career here.

The way I read the recent moves of Karl Rove & Co., they are preparing to wage war the only way open to them: not by touting George Bush, Lord knows, but by waging a national campaign to paint a nightmarish picture of what a Democratic Congress would look like, and to portray that possibility, in turn, as prelude to the even more nightmarish scenario: the return of a Democrat (Hillary) to the White House.

So the White House will try to survive by driving down the ratings of the other side. Right now, an impressive 55 percent of voters say they have a favorable view of the Democrats, one of the party’s best ratings in years. As long as the Democrats remain a generic, faceless alternative, they win; Rove’s aim is to paint his version of their portrait.

The issue of gay marriage will play a part. So far this year, at least seven states will have on their ballots measures to ban same-sex marriage: Alabama, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. There are citizen-led campaigns seeking to add the issue to ballots in Arizona, Colorado and Illinois.

But GOP strategists eventually are going to want to “nationalize" this topic, too, by bringing up in Congress again the draft of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Beyond that amendment is the more general GOP theme of faith in the public square. To highlight that issue, the White House will use judicial nominations. That’s one reason why Bush is now pushing the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh. Faith matters — namely, that he is a conservative Catholic.

Bush and Rove are daring the Democrats to turn the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden as head of the CIA into a fight over the president’s secret eavesdropping program. That’s a fight they think they can win politically, by turning a legitimate constitutional issue into another Us v. Them morality play.