The End of Rove's Dream (Dan Froomkin)

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Oct. 4, 2008 (Washington Post) -- Karl Rove's dream was that George W. Bush's presidency would usher in a permanent Republican majority. But as with so many of the Bush White House's big ideas, things didn't exactly go according to plan.

We'll know for sure by tomorrow, but it looks more and more like the end result of eight years of Bush has been the discrediting of his party and the loss of its commanding position in American politics.{xtypo_quote_right} "For Rove, there's no exit from the hell he's created. America is at war in two foreign countries. America's reputation among the nations is at an all-time low. The economy is tanking. The Republican Party has been scattered. Winning campaigns is not hard. It takes no genius. Politics is checkers, not chess. It's true that the pathological sometimes have an advantage. But that advantage is due to their cold remove from a truly human universe. And it's always temporary, because, in the end, for better or worse, what is human is not virtual. We are not pretend. Politics is not PlayStation. And Rove's virtual fantasy has come unplugged."{/xtypo_quote_right}

Turning the executive branch into a political arm of the Republican Party, stoking fear and division amid the electorate, trashing opponents without mercy, and casting national security as a wedge issue -- all these tactics had short-term benefits, and indeed won Bush a second term. But ultimately, they seem to have lost America.

As John Harwood wrote in the New York Times last week: "In 2004, after President Bush won re-election with expanded Republican majorities in Congress, academics, journalists and party strategists wondered whether his blend of free-market economics, cultural conservatism and hawkishness on national security might create long-lasting Republican rule.

"'Something fundamental and significant happened,' said Ken Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. On the eve of a second Bush term, he said, the Republican Party was 'in a stronger position than at any time since the Great Depression.'

"Today that Republican dream appears in shambles. The twin burdens of an economic crisis and an unpopular war have left Mr. Bush with, at 71 percent, the highest level of public disapproval for a president in the history of the Gallup Poll. Democrats see the chance on Nov. 4 to elect not just Senator Barack Obama but also House and Senate majorities large enough to enact his ambitious agenda."