How come Karl Rove now seems so reasonable and accommodating?
The Obama choices for economic leadership positions are fair and balanced and responsible and many other good things, Rove says in the Wall Street Journal today. This may be because the Republicans have no new economic solutions to offer and are delighted and relieved to let the other guys do it—and, for the foreseeable future anyway, to fail at it.
Or it might come from a fundamental sheepishness. Karl Rove, of all people, knows which way the wind is blowing, that the return to a Republican majority is going to require some awesome rehabilitation in sensibility and thought.
(AP Image)
What’s more, Rove, as much as any Republican, has the George Bush stink—as noxious as any in recent political memory. As Herbert Hoover doomed the Republicans for two generations, and as the sixties have haunted the Democrats, George Bush could dog the Republicans.
Every Republican has his own career to tend—not least of all Karl Rove, whose job is tending political careers. Rove now writes regular columns for the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek; he’s writing a book; he has a website. He’s clearly decided to become an avuncular figure of moderation and restraint, a centrist conservative of experience and wisdom.
There are two points to make. The first has to do with what it says about the future of the Republican party that Karl Rove, of all people, is abandoning the great right-wing unwashed and seeking the respect of the establishment media.
The second has to do with chutzpah.
