Karl Rove: Off to Another Criminal Mission
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
U.S. corporate media cannot accurately cover the crimes of Karl Rove, nor his exit from the White House, because Rove's
career is a pure extension of the most ancient machinations of white supremacists. The Republican Party, heirs to the
Dixiecrat legacy, needs Karl Rove to continue his work in the vineyards of racist political manipulation, suppression of
non-white voters, and the production of lies by the ton. The man is as skilled as Al Pacino's Lucifer in the movie, "The
Devil's Disciple" - and the Devil never retires. Rove will be putting his powers at the service of Republicans
everywhere in 2008. They cannot win except by theft, trickery and the mangling of truth - Rove's special talents.
Karl Rove: Off to Another Criminal Mission
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
"Karl Rove was at the center of the germination and actual commission of every major crime of the Bush presidency."
With Karl Rove out of the White House, the corporate media are spending countless hours speculating about what he's
going to do next. They never get it right, because they never understood - or, at least, reported - what he's actually
been doing all these years.
Karl Rove is a master of manipulating white voter prejudices, eliminating Black and brown voters from election
participation, and concocting dirty tricks to effectuate both ends. If he is "Bush's brain," as some have put it, then
George W. Bush has brain cancer. Rove's specialty is creating reality out of whole clothe. This goes behind simple media
spin, and makes conventional lying look almost harmless. Rove's "genius" is to daily invent a new "reality" that
conforms to the political ambitions of his client, and then guide public policies that conform to this false reality. In
practice, this means lying - not just spinning, but lying - daily, on an industrial scale, putting policies in motion
that are based on these layers upon layers of lies, and then using state and media power to destroy all those who
attempt to dig beneath the sediment of lies to find the truth.
Rove was perfectly positioned to complete the full cycle of birthing the lie, to policy implementation, to defense of
the policy that was based on the original lie - a never-ending cycle that characterizes the Bush regime in every area of
public policy. Rove was both the president's senior political advisor - that is, the lie-concocter-in-chief, the head
trickster and schemer - and the deputy chief of the White House staff, meaning he was the real power at the meetings
where the public policy fruits of his own lies would be implemented. In other words, Karl Rove was at the center of the
germination and actual commission of every major crime of the Bush presidency.
"Rove's signature is all over the scandal surrounding the firing of federal prosecutors who refused to suppress Black
and brown voters in their jurisdictions."
There's not enough time to list that encyclopedia of crimes - the Iraq and so-called "war on terror" categories alone
encompass hundreds of felony counts - crimes in which Rove, wearing his two hats, was both an originator and
facilitator. But it is vital to understand the political environment in which Karl Rove learned his evil skills. The
Republican Party resurrected itself after the landslide defeat of their candidate Barry Goldwater by President Lyndon
Johnson, in 1964. The GOP gradually replaced the Dixiecrats as the White Man's Party in the South. These were formative
years for a teenage Karl Rove, who was born in 1950. He studied the race baiting, vote rigging practices that converted
state after state into Republican bastions, based on race-hate - lessons that would serve him well in finally
transforming Texas into Republican territory, cleansed of all Democratic officeholders at the statewide level. This
race-based, dirty tricks strategy carried George Bush into the White House, in 2000, and was again in full swing in the
theft of the 2004 election. Rove's signature is all over the scandal surrounding the firing of federal prosecutors who
refused to suppress Black and brown voters in their jurisdictions.
So, what is Karl Rove going to do, now that he's physically out of the White House? He'll do what has always done, this
time for the Republican Party at large: rev up the racism, spin out reams of lies, and advise on the best way to exclude
Blacks and browns from the polls, in 2008. He's still got lots of crimes left in him.
*************
Glen Ford can be reached at Glen.Ford @BlackAgendaReport.com .