By now the news that Karl Rove spontaneously grew a conscience overnight and was mortally offended by a racist pig named Bo French has largely come and gone. From The Guardian:
Republicans criticize racist social media post by Texas member running for office
Karl Rove, a respected GOP consultant, further said he would vote for ‘bigot’ Bo French’s Democratic opponent after post
A senior Republican has called a party colleague running for office in Texas “a bigot” over a racist social media post attacking college football fans – and said he is so outraged by the comments that he will vote for the candidate’s Democratic rival.
Karl Rove, who was former president George W Bush’s longtime political adviser and is a respected Republican consultant in Texas, told a private event in Austin on Sunday that he could not support Bo French’s candidacy for a seat on the state’s railroad commission, the Texas Tribune reported.
Instead, he said, he will vote for Houston Democrat Jon Rosenthal over French, breaking a 32-year run of exclusively backing Republicans...
But it's worth sticking with this story for a minute longer to explore what it really tells us about Rove, about Rove's Republican Party, and about what the future of that party looks like.
First, there exists no sum of money large enough for me to use this little blog of mine to posit that, just maybe, Rove has suddenly developed a conscience and that he was so deeply disgusted by French's out-in-the-open bigotry that he would vote for a Democrat. Rove's superpower has always been his complete amorality. It's the reason the people who hire him, hire him: there are no depths to which he will not sink to win.
So a story about Jiminy Cricket showing up on his shoulder at this late date and whispering "Racism is bad" into his ear is as likely as a story about growing orchids in asphalt. The fucker will probably write in "Lee Atwater" and cackle to himself all the way home.
Second, let's be very clear about this. It is ludicrous on its face to believe that Turd Blossom is objecting to French's racism. What he's objecting to is French's tradecraft. Politicians are supposed to job their filth-mongering out to dirtbag third parties like Rove or Rick Wilson or Matthew Dowd, who, in turn, spread the work around to enough anonymous and deniable sources that there are no traceable fingerprints. Just hundreds of disgusting, lie-riddled fliers that happen to appear under the wiper blades of churchgoers one Sunday.
Or a push-poll asking what you think about John McCain fathering a black baby out-of-wedlock.
Or gay-bashing ballot initiatives showing up in areas where Republicans really, really need to guarantee that large numbers of Bible-thumping homophobes to get to the polls.
Or ads comparing a quadriplegic veteran to the world's most wanted terrorist.
Does anyone remember where and when this one ran?
This has always been the very, very profitable circle of life for Republican political consultants. And with the rise of Trump, more and more Republican politicians are seeing the efficacy and economy of cutting out the middlemen and wholesaling their bigotry and stupidity directly to the base. Which is taking food out of the mouths of scumbags like Rove so, duh, he objects.
Third, if news from this "private event" got out it's because Rove put it out. Put it out in a way that guaranteed this non-story a couple of days worth of headlines. Rove can see the abyss into which his party is sinking: an abyss towards which he spent his entire career pushing his party.
But now the monster he helped create is eating its creators.
The system of carefully laundered prejudice Rove spent decades perfecting is being replaced by politicians who simply say the quiet part out loud, which is perhaps why Rove picking an obscure, state-level race over which to publicly clutch his ersatz Indignation Pearls
Because that sure looks to these tired eyes like a man laying down the keel of a career-salvaging lifeboat. One which, one suspects, Rove hopes will eventually carry him to a comfortable berth among the Never Trump rebranding industry.
Which is why we say...
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