We’ve given you our view on Karl Rove’s remarks (and we PROMISE next time we’ll tell you what we really think….) and a Republican’s view. Now here’s a reaction from Rick Heller, one of the most prominent and thoughtful centrist bloggers around:
These are vicious remarks, and they are worse than Howard Dean’s about Republicans. Dean’s remarks were merely insulting, but they were not insidious, because no one would believe that most Republicans have never done an honest days work in their lives. What Rove is doing, by contrast, is a more calculated smear, conflating the sins of the far left, and applying them to mainstream Democrats.
Lest we forget the pre-Iraq War era, every Democratic member of Congress, save one, supported military action in Afghanistan. Both centrist and liberal Democrats supported military action. The sole exception, Berkeley’s Congresswoman Barbara Lee, is a leftist. That’s like taking the attitudes of someone like Ron Paul and making it seem like he represents mainstream conservatives.
Now, it’s true that in the above remarks, Karl Rove does not mention Democrats by name. He says “liberals.” In talking points released by the RNC, Ken Mehlman shifts the critique to the “hard left,” which is in fact accurate, and would have been acceptable had Rove used those words in the first place.
No, I don’t think that Rove need resign. But he should come in for the same tongue-lashing meted out to Howard Dean, for hyperbole and false generalizations which make it harder for our political leaders to come together and address critical problems we face.
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.