Texas Two Step

So Karl Rove is gone. In his farewell speech today at the White House he painted his time in the White House as a "witness to history." Ironic given he was Bush's right-hand man and brain. He's off to Texas at the end of the month to spend more time with the wife and kid.

The farewell was well timed -- Congress is out of session, much of the media is on vacation and at least a third of everyone in DC has left the city.

Prediction: By Sept. 3, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will "resign." Everyone wants him to go other than the president himself and Alberto's nuclear family. He'll resign during the summer doldrums so no one notices.

Speaking of Gonzales, why was he in Iraq this past weekend?  Farewell tour?

Comments

[jslot]

Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!

Rove is gone but will not fade away. He has always done his best work behind the scenes, out of the public eye. In fact, he only really hedges on trouble when something he does gets more attention than planned. Dollars to donuts that Rove will play a critical behind the scenes role in the 08 election, and that is the real reason for him to appear to bow out at this time.

Love him or hate him, one needs to respect his gamesmanship and skill in politics. Think about the 04 election: He was able to subtly take down the Kerry campaign, while all the democrats could come up with in a Rove-like response was a series of supposed decades old letters regarding Bush's military service that unfortunately were rapidly found to have fonts and typeset only found on Microsoft Word.

The reality is that the Rove-type game is what works right now. The democrats in 08 are going to need to do better than 04 when all they could come up with were a series of letters about a sitting president that were forgeries.

[jslot]

The only moderate surprise was that Rove started at it about 2 weeks before we all thought he would....

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/