Karl Rove: Off to Another Criminal Mission

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

"Karl Rove was at the center of the germination and
actual commission of every major crime of the Bush presidency."

With Karl Rove out of the White House, the corporate media
are spending countless hours speculating about what he's going to do next. They
never get it right, because they never understood - or, at least, reported -
what he's actually been doing all these years.

Karl Rove is a master of manipulating white voter
prejudices, eliminating Black and brown voters from election participation, and
concocting dirty tricks to effectuate both ends. If he is "Bush's brain," as
some have put it, then George W. Bush has brain cancer. Rove's specialty is
creating reality out of whole clothe. This goes behind simple media spin, and
makes conventional lying look almost harmless. Rove's "genius" is to daily
invent a new "reality" that conforms to the political ambitions of his client,
and then guide public policies that conform to this false reality. In practice,
this means lying - not just spinning, but lying - daily, on an industrial
scale, putting policies in motion that are based on these layers upon layers of
lies, and then using state and media power to destroy all those who attempt to
dig beneath the sediment of lies to find the truth.

Rove was perfectly positioned to complete the full cycle
of birthing the lie, to policy implementation, to defense of the policy that
was based on the original lie - a never-ending cycle that characterizes the
Bush regime in every area of public policy. Rove was both the president's
senior political advisor - that is, the lie-concocter-in-chief, the head
trickster and schemer - and the deputy chief of the White House staff, meaning
he was the real power at the meetings where the public policy fruits of his own
lies would be implemented. In other words, Karl Rove was at the center of the
germination and actual commission of every major crime of the Bush presidency.

"Rove's
signature is all over the scandal surrounding the firing of federal prosecutors
who refused to suppress Black and brown voters in their jurisdictions." RoveArrestedFunny

There's not enough time to list that encyclopedia of
crimes - the Iraq and so-called "war on terror" categories alone encompass
hundreds of felony counts - crimes in which Rove, wearing his two hats, was
both an originator and facilitator. But it is vital to understand the political
environment in which Karl Rove learned his evil skills. The Republican Party
resurrected itself after the landslide defeat of their candidate Barry
Goldwater by President Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. The GOP gradually replaced the
Dixiecrats as the White Man's Party in the South. These were formative years
for a teenage Karl Rove, who was born in 1950. He studied the race baiting,
vote rigging practices that converted state after state into Republican
bastions, based on race-hate - lessons that would serve him well in finally
transforming Texas into Republican territory, cleansed of all Democratic
officeholders at the statewide level. This race-based, dirty tricks strategy
carried George Bush into the White House, in 2000, and was again in full swing
in the theft of the 2004 election. Rove's signature is all over the scandal surrounding
the firing of federal prosecutors who refused to suppress Black and brown
voters in their jurisdictions.

So, what is Karl Rove going to do, now that he's
physically out of the White House? He'll do what has always done, this time for
the Republican Party at large: rev up the racism, spin out reams of lies, and
advise on the best way to exclude Blacks and browns from the polls, in 2008.
He's still got lots of crimes left in him.