The best blog coverage comes, of course, from Brad Friedman and Josh Marshall. Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson. both Republicans of New Mexico, appear to have had a hand in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Now we learn that this thing goes up to state Republican party director Allen Weh, and from there to -- you guessed it! -- Karl Rove:
In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.More:
"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.
"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.
"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.
Several Republican activists interviewed for this story said their frustration with Iglesias dated back to before the 2004 election, and his decision to create a task force on voter fraud rather than try to prosecute Democrats who submitted allegedly fraudulent voter registrations.As Brad notes,
We'll add here, for those who hadn't noticed, Wilson was named the winner over her Democratic opponent Patricia Madrid last November by fewer than 800 votes. Since New Mexico's new automatic recount law didn't kick in until the first of this year, there was no recount.The scheme becomes clearer. Rove, hoping to forestall controversies over election fraud -- rigged computerized voting machines, the allocation of insufficient machines to minority voting districts, and so forth -- tried to create a counter-controversy over alleged Democratic fraud involving false registrations.
As we now know, there was no such epidemic; the right-wing noise machine tried to transform a few isolated cases into a massive problem. The Republicans even created a bogus "American Center for Voting Rights," which, despite being newly-minted, despite being headed by party hacks, and despite operating out of a post office box, was given instant credibility by Republican lawmakers.
That's Rove's strategy: If you are defending, you're losing. If you are explaining, you're losing. Make the other guy do the defending and the explaining. Go on the attack.
Tightening up registration requirements had the extra benefit (from Rove's point of view) of depressing the minority and the poor vote. Poor people move more often than rich people do, and they have greater problems securing two forms of identification.
Iglesias would not go along with the plan. Hence, high-level calls for his head.
By the way: I have never agreed with those who view Karl Rove as a past-tense issue. Neither do I agree with those pundits who speak of him as a man whose reputation exceeds his capabilities. This masterful manipulator got a simpleton like W into office twice. He was, is, and will continue to be a formidable political tactician.
6 comments:
Rove may be a very smart reptile, but (as you know better than anyone) he couldn't get Bush elected (as opposed to appointed) in 2000, and this despite an astonishingly brazen bias against Gore in the national media, a large money advantage and an inept Gore campaign.
Bush was already on his way to 30% approval ratings by the summer of 2001. If not for 9/11....
Rove has been a disaster for Bush at the policy level, as we see now. If the Democrats had had the backbone to mount an opposition for 2006, it might well have unravelled long ago.
So yeah, he's highly effective as a campaign tactician, but an utter disaster at governance.
Poppa, may I please have a drink of Water-loo?
There's a current thread at DU about this post of yours, where I started adding in what I knew about "voter fraud" -- and then went from there to musing about the genuine election fraud in Ohio in 2004 that the false claims of voter fraud were designed to cover up. That in turn led to US Attorney Gregory A White and his sluggish investigation of coin dealer Tom Noe:
A prominent Michigan congressman is criticizing the U.S. Justice Department’s handling of the Tom Noe investigation, saying it “delayed” its probe until after the re-election of President Bush.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D., Detroit), in a letter to Gregory A. White, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, criticized progress on the case that involved one of the President’s highest-profile fund-raisers in Ohio.
“In particular, I am concerned that your office delayed investigating this very serious matter until after the 2004 presidential election and as a result prejudiced the government’s ability to pursue justice in this case,” Mr. Conyers wrote.
In his letter, Mr. Conyers asked Mr. White to answer a number of questions, which boil down to: What did he know about Mr. Noe and when did he know it? The congressman also wants to know if officials within the Bush administration talked with Mr. White’s office about the case.
Conyers also wrote to Albert Gonzales asking for a special prosecutor in the Noe case on the grounds that Karl Rove, among others, had been involved in White getting his job.
I'm guessing at this point that White may have been one of those dogs that didn't bark.
wow! starroute strikes again! bravo.
hell, even this stupid story that they were thinking about canning all 93 attys in 05 is part of the scheme to assert that they could do it if they wanted to, and besides, clinton did it! yeah, clinton got rid of 12 years of repugs in justice; his prerogative. please explain why you would get rid of four years of your own appointments?
what really fascinates me in all this lies along the lines of the dogs that didn't bark. namely, the damage has been done.
part of the strategies we've seen emerge out of the many many scandals involving the WH has been that tried and true notion of bad husbands: better to apologize than ask permission.
that's what we see going on here. some heads will roll, a couple of sacrifices will be made, but ultimately the dangerous investigations have been stopped. those barkless dog cases will continue to emerge as time goes on, so watch for them, especially at talkingpointsmemo.
in the meantime, also watch for gonzo to pull all manner of nixonian passive voice mea culpas, oops my bad, nodding like a turtle, all the while smiling his churlish smile and knowing the job was ultimately done.
mission accomplished, indeed.
I get tired of seeing post after post about how "smart" Der Rovesmarschall is.
No, he isn't-he's every bit as big an idiot as the crew he works for. Der Rovesmarschall is willing to climb into the septic tank to get the job done-this doesn't require "smarts" at all. All you need is a lack of ethics. The dems (and for that matter, Chimpy's 2000 Gopper opponents) weren't willing to get as filthy as the corpulent corrupter, and therefore gave him a free hand.
Der Rovesmarschall only has two tactics in his bag-demonizing the other guy and projection. This whole "voter fraud" thing that got the Federal Prosecutors fired was an example of "projection"-which means take your own worst tendencies and accuse someone else of having them. The election of 2006 exposed Rove for the idiot that he really is. Let us hope that he now gets exposed for the criminal scumbag he's always been.
i agree with jolly roger here. we might be able to apply some version of 'intelligence' to successes that come from just grabbing what you want, to hell with the rules, but i'm hard-pressed to put rove's smarts in the same category as that of say, fitz.
though it does take a certain kind of smarts to figure out how to beat the system, the same way good card sharks and that guy in 'catch me if you can', i'll take the full monty if you will of smarts that include an intelligent grasp of the importance of playing by the rules.
i'll even go beyond the importance of playing by the rules, because there comes a time - in the course of human events, etc. - to recognize that rules are often made by those in power for the benefit of those in power, and so sometimes require breaking through civil disobedience.
no, what is reequired is an intelligence that embraces the MORAL imperative of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. for lack of better and more succinct way to state a universal moral principle.
and rove is so far beyond THAT notion of intelligence, it ain't even funny.
and joe is totally right about rove's influence; he's no more gone from power there any more than rummy is. i cannot for the life of me figure why congress is not pitching holy hissy fits about these two characters still being in play after (a) resignation, and (2) assurances from bush leakers would be fired.
where IS the beef??
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