Tag: Karl Rove

Clint, how could you?

~ odd man out ~ 1 Comment
The GOP strategist was offended, and it shows

High-level Republican propagandists are still suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance resulting from the Chrysler ad, shown during the Super Bowl, in which Clint Eastwood — a hero of Ronald Reagan — praises the Detroit auto industry and Americans workers for fighting hard to recover from the collapse of the economy in 2008.

From Raw Story.com:

“They almost lost everything,” Eastwood says [in the ad]. “But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again.”

“How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And how do we win?” the actor asks. “Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And what’s true about them, is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it’s halftime, America, and our second half is about to begin…”

Fox News host Jon Scott on Monday told Rove that Democrats were celebrating the ad as evidence of the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s bold decision to bailout the auto companies instead of letting them go under.

“This is a sign of what happens when you have government getting in bed with big business like the bailout of the auto companies,” Rove complained. “The leadership of the auto companies feel they need to do something to repay their political patrons.”

“I was, frankly, offended by it,” he added. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood. I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics. And the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

This was another reminder that Fox News, and people such as Rove and Eric Cantor, would say or do almost anything not only to discredit Obama but also to wreck any initiatives that might result in even a slight economic upturn. To hell with suffering Americans — gotta think about winning those 2012 elections.

Turd Blossom can’t take the heat

~ odd man out

This guy is used to speaking at events only Republicans are allowed to attend:

Last night, former Bush official Karl Rove appeared at Johns Hopkins University to speak as a part of the annual Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium. Rove soon discovered that he wasn’t going to deliver his right-wing rhetoric unopposed, as a cry of “Mic Check!” rang out among the audience.

“Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!” yelled the demonstrators. Occupy Baltimore had infiltrated the crowd and began chanting against Rove. “Who gave you the right to occupy America?” asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights. As they repeated their slogan, “We are the 99 percent!” Rove petulantly responded, “No you’re not!” He snidely added, “You wanna keep jumping up and yelling that you’re the 99 percent? How presumptuous and arrogant can you think are!”

About 15 protesters were asked to leave and some were forcibly removed. No one was arrested.

Turd Blossom outlines GOP’s war on workers

~ odd man out

Want to see a rough sketch of how low the Republican Party will sink in waging war against those who would pass the American Jobs Act? Here you are:

Karl Rove’s organization American Crossroads, which functions as a kind of privately run Republican Party organization, has a memo laying out how the party ought to oppose President Obama’s jobs bill. It’s a telling window into the contours of the jobs debate. The specifics of Obama’s proposal are all highly popular, and the Republican challenge is to oppose it anyway. The memo offers a fascinating look at the mechanisms of political spin in general, and the particular dilemma of the Republican Party as it blocks economic action in the face of crisis.

The key fact to understand about the bill, delicately left unmentioned by the American Crossroads memo, is that Americans want to do all the things Obama proposes. By a twenty-point margin, they favor funding new road construction and a payroll tax cut. By a 30-point margin, they agree with higher taxes on the rich to cut the long-term deficit. They support helping stave off layoffs of police officers, firefighters, and teachers by a 50-point margin. How do you fight that?

You redefine the issue as a generalization. People don’t like firing police officers and teachers? Fine, just call them “union workers”:

Similarly, 70% of respondents initially favor Obama’s proposal to “give billions to states to stop layoffs of teachers and firefighters.” But when the same idea is described as “giv[ing] billions to states to keep government union workers on the payroll,” 52% turn against the idea.

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