Joe on Karl

If you're wondering about Karl Rove's idiotic cheerleading in New York, then Joe Gandelman, the Moderate Voice, has the goods. I cannot add a single thing to Joe's excellent work on the subject.

If Republicans clamored to have Durbin apologize for overblown rhetoric insulting the country, we assume Republicans of conscience will now insist that Rove apologize.

But the White House is backing his comments — which means this is how they feel: that the Democrats are soft on terrorism and want to see American troops harmed.

20th century McCarthyism seems to have been replaced by 21st century Rove-ism.

Update 3.45pm Central

Hey, I was wrong - there is more to say and John Cole says a lot of it.

My party no longer is merely content selling our bullshit. We are now starting to believe it. I'd say Mr. Rove has an apology to issue.

Then he has another try in his own comments section:

Rove stated they had no desire to do anything tough about terrorism, while Republicans were preparing for war. The resolution [of 14th Sept. 2001] shows that the opposite is true.

Kerry stated during his campaign (umm, 3 years later) that he thought less emphasis on the military and more emphasis on law enforcement was necessary.

That was something I disagreed with then and still do, but to attempt to claim that liberals only want therapy and understanding for terrorists and that the only thing liberals want to do is to put our troops at danger is either an outrageous and indefensible smear or a god damned lie.

Take your pick.

and I do have something to say after all, which I already said today in Lokester's comments:

"Yeah, interesting that Rove mentioned the property damage first, before the lives lost...

I for one am a lefty illiberal. I would never have wasted energy on Iraq until (at least)Osama was dead. I would have nuked Tora-bora if that was what was needed. I would never have enlisted the help of the two-faced Musharraf so that his regime could protect the Talibam and al-Qaida while pretending otherwise to the US."

Rove has, as I believe the quaint American phrase puts it, "jumped the shark" - and the White House is right behind him. Then again, Bush and Rove must be used to leaping the carnivorous carcharadon by now.

Update 24th June

Should you wish to see what the rightwing echo chamber wants to say about this, save some time surfing their blogs and just refer to the RNC talking points release. Talk about shills...