His Dark Malevolenceship wants to rule (again)

The thought occurs that in picking a fight with the Tea Party, Karl Rove has put the Republicans into an untenable position. While I can certainly understand how his lust for power blinded him to the maelstrom that followed, what I don't get is why the man decided the GOP needed a two-front fight. Where one of the fronts is a civil war!

Yeah, the Republicans have become unfathomably extreme of late. They've gone so far to the right they've made the John Birch Society look reasonable. (That, if you're unaware of who they are, is a bit like making Joe McCarthy look reasonable. And he was a soft leftie to those idiots.) And then there's the timing of all this - the economy is, despite the best efforts of Congressional Republicans, getting better. That alone will destroy the Tea Party. And yes, the Tea Party has had a fractious relationship with the Republican establishment. But the Tea Party never had a political philosophy, they had anger and that's dissipating as the economy improves. All Karl had to do was quietly influence the picks for 2014 and 2016 and the GOP stood a chance of actually winning the Senate. Now? It's the same battle as 2012 - who's more Republican, more extremely Republican than the sitting Senator?

Personally, I think Karl Rove never spent any time in the trenches before making the decision to launch his new SuperPAC. If he had, he'd have seen the vitriol and anger, the inarticulate (and misspelled) rage bubbling at the surface (that's not quite as metaphorical as I'd like it to be...) Instead, I think he decided that he needed to reassert his authority over the party. And he made a pretty fundamental mistake - he believed in his own infallibility. An odd mistake for someone so usually competent in the dark arts of the political battlefield. And no, I don't think he's setting up some Machiavellian play. I think he genuinely believes he can guide the party toward moderation and will have a dozen Senators and a score of House Reps at his command because of that.

The thing I don't get is why he thinks he can win this one. The Tea Party is many things, but prostitute is not among them (they prefer being outrightly owned). Besides, they're looking a bit shopworn right now. Perhaps the man is mistaking the shabby appearance for structural problems? Hmm. The GOP as a fixer-upper. There's a thought. :-)

Carolyn Ann