"Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service."
--Paul Krugman, in "Rove’s Third Term"
At some point before writing on Wesley Clark's remarks about John McCain, Paul Krugman got his Karl Rove mask out of the closet and scared himself. Apparently, he was unable to calm down and focus before the piece was published.
Forget Pol Pot, Darth Vader or evil clowns. What scares those who inhabit the pristine Leftist air of a New York Times cubicle is Karl Rove: the manic evil mastermind who guided a complete idiot to victory over two of the NYT's flagship products, Al Gore and John Kerry.
Rove is a creature of almost mythical proportions in the Left's mind, a master manipulator. How else to explain the country's rejection of a true American patriot, John Kerry? It couldn't have been Kerry's actions that turned off large segments of voters: it was Kalculating Karl pointing out Kerry's actions.
Portly, balding, malicious, simpering, he looks like a cross between Sesame Street's Mr. Hooper and the Third Reich's Heinrich Himmler. And he acts like a cross between Heinrich Himmler and Henry Kissinger. Whom he also looks like. And not in a good way.
Oh yeah, he's a man who compromised national security, putting lives of American agents in danger.
Because when you're rabidly anti-war, the only agent's lives you worry about are those that never leave the comfort of a Washington building. Oh wait, that wasn't Rove.
Only a malignant, malevolent force such as Rove, could have convinced Americans to vote for Chimpy George McBushitler over Krugman's favored Democrat sons.
Children of the NY Times' editorial staff have spent the better part of this decade getting the bejezus scared out of them at bedtime with stories about Evil Dick Cheney and Kalculating Karl Rove.
"Swift Boat", "Rovian", "patriotism card": Krugman tickles his regular readers with enough buzzwords to make them wet their pants. In Krugman's view, Americans didn't just electorally disdain Democrats in 2000, 2002, and 2004: they were snookered by the Evil Rove's superior patriot card-playing skills.
At several points, he leaves the reader wondering if Krugman is breathless or hyper-ventilating:
"Will Rovian tactics work this year?"
"Since then, however, both the press and the Obama campaign seem to have recovered some of their balance." (That the two are synonymous is left unsaid.)
In the end, the Clark affair may have strengthened the Obama campaign. Last week, with his cave-in on wiretapping, Mr. Obama was showing disturbing signs of falling into the usual Democratic cringe on national security. This may have been the week he rediscovered the virtues of standing tall.
Krugman finishes with something that might be on the collective minds of the New York Times staff after the paper ran the John McCain-Vicki Iseman "scandal":
"...news organizations may think twice before buying into the next fake scandal."
Karl Rove must be smiling: even as a private citizen, he still produces puddles around the pantlegs of the Left.
In the end, Paul Krugman reveals much about the superstitions and prejudices of a writer at the New York Times; little about Clark's McCain remarks.
by Mondoreb
Sources:
* Rove’s Third Term
* Karl Rove