Rove resignation: Big loss or no great loss for the US?

No loss

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by James Ray

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Karl Rove's resignation is the best thing to happen to this country in the past seven years. If you aren't familiar with Rove's work, here is a list of his greatest hits.

1. He helped maneuver George W. Bush into the Texas Governor's mansion by spreading rumors that the incumbent governor, the popular Ann Richards, was a lesbian. In Texas, these things matter, unfortunately, and many believe that Rove's rumormongering swung the the election in Dubya's favor. (See Bush's Brain by James Moore and Wayne Slater.)

2. He helped crowbar George W. Bush into the White House by pressuring (and some say threatening) Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to stop the official recounts of Florida votes when that re-count had narrowed the gap between Bush and Gore to just 537 votes. Later, complete recounts were done, and they showed that Gore, not Bush, won the election. (New York Times)

3. Rove leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent and the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson to members of the press. (Newsweek, July 18, 2005). It is a crime for a person in the government to willfully leak a CIA agent's identity.

4. Rove may have orchestrated widespread election fraud during the 2004 election. This is not just "crazy-liberal internet" stuff. On election day in Ohio in 2004, exit polls showed that John Kerry was poised to beat President Bush by up to 20%. Since Ohio had lost a total of 350,000 jobs during the first Bush term, and because Gallup polls had shown Kerry in the lead for months, a Democratic win in Ohio was no surprise.

But it didn't happen. When the official election results were delivered, Bush had somehow taken Ohio. Amidst an uproar from Democrats, requests for a recount were made. A recount, however, was not possible because Ohio used electronic voting machines that did not produce any record of the votes allegedly registered. The manufacturer of the machines, Diebold, Inc., had two high ranking executives that were connected to the Bush Administration. CEO Walden O'Dell raised more than $100,000 for Bush leading up to the 2004 election, and Director Tim Timken raised $350,000. Interesting. These hardcore Republicans build voting machines whose results can't be traced, raise half a million bucks for Bush, place the machines in Ohio, which was the battleground state of the election, and the results from those machines deviate 25% from the exit polls.

5. Rove chaired the White House Iraq Group, which was designed to sell the war to the American people by exaggerating the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to America. This group, which was unknown to Congress or the public until 2005, began meeting and strategizing eight month before the invasion of Iraq.

There are so many more sins, and so little space. Rove's political philosophy seemed to be something like this: think up something sinister, have appointees execute the strategy, if you get caught, attack your accuser and try to destroy his or her career, reputation and life. Despicable. The man represents perfectly how this Administration had set back the cause of true democracy by more than just two presidential terms.

His loss is the Nation's gain.

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