Black Box Report

Karl Rove hasn't even left the building yet, and already the sweet allure of his take no prisoners, win at all costs campaign style has some conservatives like Hugh Hewitt jonesing for a hit, hoping the Rover will get back in the game for 2008:

Democrats have to be worried that when Karl Rive exits the White House in August, he'll take a month off and end up at the virtual elbow of Mayor Giuliani, Governor Romney, or Senator Thompson. They should be worried. Of course that's what he (and Ken Mehlman) will be doing. All-stars whose franchise can't play for the title often show up in the heat of the hunt. Politics is like sports in many ways. And Rove is the Tiger Woods of politics.

I'll give Hugh credit (now there's something I never thought I'd say) - politics is like sports. But I think a better athlete analogy for Rove would be Mark McGuire. An anabolic monster whose impressive home run accomplishment was overshadowed by cheating, and whose career was cut short by the very instrument of his success. But unlike the St. Louis Cardinals, Karl's team will be suffering long after his departure. Rove promised a Republican realignment that would last decades, but his strategy backfired. Andrew Sullivan makes the case that Rove sacrificed lasting success for quick, short-term gains - ruining the GOP in the process:

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

Apparently those toxins give a pretty good buzz, because the current crop of GOP candidates are all eager to take a hit:

Whatever history makes of Karl Rove’s role in the White House, his legacy as a political strategist can be measured in a presidential campaign that has already begun without him. A look at the roster of every Republican presidential candidate finds people who have worked with him, and they have brought some of his methods to this race.

"Whatever history makes of Karl Rove's role..." Sheesh. Ad Nags doesn't bother to decry Roves tactics. After all, he's never tried the really hard stuff, but the contact high? FREEEEE-YOWWW! Karl Rove did for the politics of division and demonizing what Sid Vicious did for heroin to a generation of punks. But just as heroin is poison, the GOP candidates haven't caught on that Rove's strategies may give a quick high, but lead to an early, messy death:

In 2006, the year he had the math, his party got walloped, not flipping a single seat for the first time in modern history. He presided over an historic collapse of the Republican Party such that the 2008 race will only be won by running against the protege he brought to the White House.
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Rove ran the same exact "play to the base" election every year no matter what the political landscape. The only difference was that he was willing to be more ruthless and more unethical and even more criminal. That's not genius, unless you consider a criminal mind genius. In so doing, Rove empowered a maniac base that is purging their party of moderate, national candidates and quickly turning them into a regional minority.

Karl Rove - the heroin of American politics