Balloon Juice’s JOHN COLE:
The reason Rove’s remarks are being attacked as a stab in the back launched (at) all Democrats is because it is. He created a world with two lines of thought- one conservative, one liberal. The conservative position just so happened to be the one he thought was right, the one he aligned with the GOP, and the positions advocated by this Republican administration.
The other line of thought he attributed to the opposition, who is the Democratic party. There was no mention of ‘some liberals,’ or ‘some Democrats,’ and for good measure he threw in Drubin and Dean, just in case we didn’t make the not-so-subtle connection.
You are simply lying to yourself if you try to claim otherwise, and it is pretty clear right now that this is a coordinated strategy to mute opposition. Durbin was just the opportunistic opening they were looking for…
RedState.Org’s JOSH TREVINO:
The remarkable thing about the excuse-making for Karl Rove is how intellectually dishonest so much of it is. Yep, you read that right. Read on.
The excuses fall into two camps: first, that Rove mentioned liberals, not Democrats; second, that Rove is adeptly highlighting a key Republican (though, notably, not conservative!) strength in the public mind….
Several prominent Democrats took offense, presumably because they believed that Rove was talking about them.
I don’t think Rove was talking about me, but I’m not happy with his remarks, either — for a different reason. I’m disturbed by the trashing of the word “liberal,” which used to mean “believing in or allowing more personal freedom” but which now has come to describe anyone who is to the political “left” of the speaker. Being a person who has had a “liberal” thought from time to time, I wish that folks like Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh would find a more precise term to describe people with whom they disagree.
I don’t feel that Rove owes me an apology, but I understand if others feel differently.
We seem to have a problem in this country with people who can’t control their tounges. Instead of being simply critical with those who disagree with them, but instead these people decide to decimate the opposition and make wide sweeping generalizations of the other side. On the Democratic side we have people like Howard Dean who talks about hating “Republicans and everything they stand for,” or about how Republicans never working a day in their lives. On Wednesday, White House strategist Karl Rove excoriated liberals about how they were rather weak on 9/11….
He has basically said the opposition are traitors-something you can’t knowingly apply to all Dems. It’s one thing to criticize the Dems on foreign policy. I’ve done that. But I’ve never called them traitors. Rove should be ashamed, but he isn’t. I’m saddened for how callous American politics have become.
Will people never learn? I join the chorus of calls for deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove to apologize for comments made last night at a New York City fundraiser. They were outrageous, inappropriate, and untrue, to say the least. They serve only to further divide a nation that needs no more division.
DemWatch’s Scott Shields:
It’s pretty easy to debunk his vile revisionist history, too. Check the voting records. Three days after the attacks on September 14, Congress voted “To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” Two hundred and four Democrats voted for the authorization. One progressive independent who caucuses with the Democrats — Bernie Sanders of Vermont — also voted for the authorization. Only one Democrat, Barbara Lee, voted no on the bill, citing what she referred to as the “overly broad powers” the authorization granted the President. In the Senate, a companion bill was passed the same day, with every Democratic member voting yes.
Where were the calls for moderation and restraint? Where are the calls for therapy and understanding for the brutal murderers? The whole thing is getting disgusting. The Democrats aren’t innocent in this, but they’re certainly not the main culprits. Over the last few weeks, the political scene in America has descended to such a point that I find myself struggling to even cover it anymore. Now please excuse me while I go puke..
These are excerpts. Please read each of these posts in full.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.