WataugaWatch

That monument to bad judgment, Karl Rove, was in Raleigh yesterday raising money for Sen. Dick Burr, who apparently needs help in the worst way.

Rove gave an interview to the News&Observer in which he opined that Republicans need "to address the kitchen-table issues that people talk about at home that affect their lives: jobs, the economy, health care, access of their children to college, how to pay for college, quality of life, the environment."

Look at that laundry list closely. When have the Republicans offered any substantive help on any of those topics? Why, Madam Virginia Foxx alone is a study in NOT helping. She votes against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, she votes against raising the minimum wage, she votes against extending unemployment benefits, she votes against college loans, hell, she votes against the School Lunch program! And "the environment"? Don't make us laugh out loud and choke on our tongues!

So we don't know which Republican Party Karl Rove is talking about, but it isn't the one currently sending Madam Virginia Foxx to Congress.

Labels: Karl Rove, Republican "brand", Richard Burr, Virginia Foxx

News that Karl Rove will do a fundraiser for Sen. Dick Burr in Raleigh in January produces a shiver of recognition: This IS, after all, a senator shaped by, made by "the awful aughts," and we certainly needed to be reminded of the massive failures of that whole crew.

The Burr "optics" are most curious but very revealing: nothing of solutions, nothing of a vision for the future, but just the same old same old, a discredited past and a nasty politics. Abysmal symbols for a lackluster public official.

FOOTNOTE
Rove, incidentally, will be shaking his money-maker for Burr fresh off his second divorce. He's sure to stress family values!

Labels: Karl Rove, Richard Burr

Reader Jeff sent me this essay by James Moore about the current movement toward secession in Texas, a flirtation with treason led by that state's governor (and towering cathedral of sapience), Rick Perry.

James Moore is one of our favorite Texas authors, now that Molly Ivins is no more with us. He co-authored "Bush's Brain" about that other towering monument of self-aggrandisement, Karl Rove. It was in that book that I learned that Karl Rove and I shared Salt Lake City at the same time, he an aspiring Young Republican at Highland High School while I was studying Milton and English revolutionaries at the University of Utah. We turned out differently. He's rich.

Moore's little essay about some recent history of Texas separationists and the current Republican psychosis (it's called "defeat," guys) flooded me with my own memories of growing up in the Lone Star State, where most male babies seem to be born with a swagger and an innate drive to over-compensate.

Texans will talk to complete strangers. They almost prefer strangers, especially when delivering proclamations of intolerance. I was catching a plane in Houston once, and a gentleman in regulation Texas-wear -- a big white cowboy hat, boots, leather jacket (I'm NOT making this up) -- turned to me from the next seat over, asked, "Where bound?" I replied, "Washington, D.C." He snorted. "Whole place needs to be nuked," he said, and though the extravagance of that prescription seemed to invite laughter, you could tell from the steeliness of his gaze and the total lack of humor in his affect, that he totally and completely meant it.

For the next 30 minutes and until my flight was called, thankfully, he outlined a typical Texan's beef not just with the national government but pretty much with all government. I didn't argue with him. I mainly nodded and said "That so?" the way you'd converse with a meth addict playing with a gun.

In the household I grew up in, my father made fun of Texas dudes like that one, though he worked for them all his life, guys with big booming voices and big ideas and big egos. My father knew they called the shots, but they were just larger-than-usual pissants when the door was closed.

My political science teacher while I was still in Texas once told me, when the topic turned to Lyndon Baines Johnson and his whole history of chicanery, which was well known in Texas, "Son, given the choice between an outright crook and a complete idiot, Texans will always choose the crook."

In the case of Rick Perry, they apparently went with the idiot, and a larger-than-usual pissant.

Labels: James Moore, Karl Rove, Rick Perry, teabag protest, Texas

Several readers have sent me the link to Mudflats, an Alaska blog written by an East coast native who's lived and worked in Alaska since 1991. This blogger offers more insider specifics on the curious case of the rise of Sarah Palin. First up: Palin's Big Lie that she opposed "the bridge to nowhere" earmark. T'ain't true. "Total fabrication," says Mudflats, who proceeds to offer the irrefutable evidence.

The giggling over Palin among the Sunday Morning Gasbags was under tight control, though the only talking head worth listening to, Republican operative Mike Murphy, who ran John McCain's campaign back in 2000, delivered the only opinion worth the combined hot air: Sarah Palin can make the religious right giddier than the prospect of themo-noookalar war with Russia, but if all she does is solidify McCain's base, she's done NOTHING toward winning this election.

The big giggle moment of the morning came when Cindy McCain said Sarah Palin had foreign policy cred on the basis of Alaska's being so close to both Russia and Canada, two of our most despicable socialist enemies, after Obama, of course. By this reasoning I consider myself an expert on oil and gas, since I grew up adjacent to the oil patch in Texas. Hell, all my uncles were roughnecks on oil rigs, so maybe I ought to be Secretary of Energy! George Stephanopoulos, bless his heart, kept a straight face throughout Cindy McCain's rap.

Under the topic heading ... The Things a Whore Has To Say and Do: A couple of weeks ago Karl Rove belittled Tim Kaine as a possible Democratic Veep pick on Face the Nation:

With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years, he's been able but undistinguished. I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done.

He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it's smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; north Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town.

Oops. It takes a whore to swallow the big ones. Friday on Fox News -- and exhibiting absolutely no involuntary gag reflex -- Rove bragged about Sarah Palin:

She's a former mayor. She's the mayor of, I think, the second largest city in Alaska before she ran for governor.

For the record, Wasilla, Alaska, was not even the 10th largest city in Alaska. It's smaller than Chula Vista, Aurora, Mesa, Gilbert, North Las Vegas, and Henderson.

With all due respect.

Labels: Cindy McCain, John McCain, Karl Rove, Mike Murphy, Sarah Palin