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What Will Bush's Brain Do Next?

It shouldn't come as any great surprise that Karl Rove is leaving the administration. His job is all about winning, and with Bush, there's nothing left to be won. (Though even on his way out the door, Rove can't keep himself from spinning, predicting that we'll turn a corner in Iraq and Bush's poll numbers will rise. But that's a sucker's game, and Rove himself wants no part of it.)

Rove has said he's going back to Texas to spend more time with his family. Awww, that's nice. But then what? I wouldn't expect him to stay out of politics for long. One only has to read a few sentences into "Revenge of the Nerds," our piece on high school policy debaters, to realize how deep and long standing is Rove's love of playing hardball:

It would have been the spring of 1969, the Vietnam War in full swing, when a scrawny 18-year-old in a suit and tie and horn-rimmed glasses pushed a handcart stacked with 10 boxes into a classroom at Olympus High School, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Each shoebox was stuffed with four-by-six notecards pasted with evidence clipped from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. As the young man and his partner unpacked their evidence on a small table at the front of the room, members of the other policy debate team looked on in horror. They'd only brought one shoebox.

What they didn't know was that 99 percent of the notecards in the Olympus team's 10 shoeboxes were just props. Even at 18, the scrawny kid with the horn-rims understood the power of intimidation."Rove didn't just want to win," James Moore and Wayne Slater write in their book Rove Exposed: How Bush's Brain Fooled America. "He wanted the opponents destroyed. His worldview was clear even then. There was his team and the other team, and he would make the other team pay."

This isn't a man that's going to be content going back to Texas and raising chickens. And though the 2006 rout of the RNC may taken the bloom off Rove's rose somewhat, "the architect" has still got to be a highly sought-after campaign consultant. Provided he can modernize his direct mail data mining/smear expertise to dovetail with the whole cell phone/social networking/video wave of the future. But let's assume he can.

So any bets as to where Rove will pop up? Fred Thompson seems to be running as the "most like Bush" candidate; could that strategy include Rove? Will Rove sit this election out entirely, perhaps scouting the next feckless son of a prominent politician?

Comments

What are the odds he ends up taking George P. Bush, Jeb's son, to the presidency? 80% to 90%, right?

Posted by: Jonathan on 08/13/07 at 7:51 AM

My take on this issue of where will Rove go/do next is that Jeb Bush, of the Bush crime family, is waiting in the wings for his chance at dominion and domination over other peoples lives(for profit and political power, of course), aka the Repub party and Rove will work for him.

Since the twenties and thirties the Bush family has had a very different, an authoritarian, view of America and the world and bereft as they are of anything other than the profit and political power motivations, they are not about to move to Paraguay/Uruguay( I can't remember)to their plantation there or remain quietly in Texass. This family of Barbara 'the dominator' Bush is not done doing what Mama Babs and her 'fine mind' of no morals, hate, profit and domination over others is finished or giving up on that obsession.

Given that they are backed up by the Rethug party, the corporatocracy and the two fundamentalist religions(Catholic, my religion, and the evangelical fundies) there is no compelling reason that they should stop or want to stop their agenda/ideology being forced on the rest of us.

Posted by: bobr900 on 08/13/07 at 8:07 AM

Do you mean the guy responsible for all the death and destruction being done by the totally out of control Rethuglikkkan party and the Bush crime family of death and the end to democracy for America so they can get even richer and more powerful than they are.

And the answer to the articles question is he will do what he is best at doing, namely, causing even more death and destruction, that is what he will do. What else does a successfully evil and criminal and totally corrupt person do, exactly what he is good at.

Posted by: bobr900 on 08/13/07 at 10:05 AM

The chances of even Republican's falling for another Shrub family member are fairly slim.
Der Karl has finally come to realize that old Abe was right; you can't fool all the people all the time.
The real question seems to be, who will tell the Shrub what to say now?
If it's left up to the Shootist, expect a lot of FU's.
As to the timing, someone must have been getting real close to an indictment of Der Karl.

Posted by: JamesL on 08/13/07 at 1:49 PM

The MSM praised Rove on creating the juggernaut which propelled Bush to power. This is the extent of the MSM's critical analysis of the Republican Party "juggernaut". Rove and the Republicans view of success is winning the election, or the selection such as in Bush's case in 2000. Governance is not even a consideration as is proven with the Bush maladministration. They do not mention governance when campaigning, and the Republican Party's platform is that government is the problem and to prove themselves right they appoint those who will be bad at governance.Winning an elections is not the end of governing but is just the beginning of governing.Prevailing in the selection or election is short sighted which is all the consumer society of the U.S. is willing to comprehend. Rove's maliciousness and corruption will not end now AND WHOEVER SAID JEB BUSH is lurking in the shadows is correct and it will be sooner rather than later, in 2008 as Vice President nominee with the intent of continuing the Cheney model.

Posted by: bogi666 on 08/14/07 at 7:11 AM