Democrats responsible for divisive tone

Jim Rutenberg:

During the last eight years, Karl Rove has been lionized and vilified, heralded as making the unlikely election victories of President Bush possible and impugned as reaching too high from an unusually powerful White House perch.

In the eyes of his many detractors, he has helped to send the Bush presidency off track in the process.

But in an interview at an IHOP restaurant here, days after he announced his resignation as Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, Mr. Rove defiantly dismissed the rash of fresh critiques that have come his way in the last several days, blaming the Democrats for the divisive tone that has dominated Mr. Bush’s tenure and for which he has frequently taken the blame.

He said he had no regrets over what some even some allies have called his greatest missteps, like his trying and failing to pass a sweeping overhaul of the Social Security system at the start of Mr. Bush’s second term, and the degree to which he seemed to meld partisan politics and official White House policy in his dual duties as a deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush’s top political strategist.

He strenuously argued with the dominant characterization of him as the Oz — or, with Vice President Dick Cheney, the co-Oz — behind the curtain of Mr. Bush’s White House and presidency, declaring, “I’m the facilitator,” who has merely helped Mr. Bush as he has sought to shape his own views.

Mr. Rove at the same time described himself as an aggressive and studious inside player at the White House who is still one of the four or five officials forming Mr. Bush’s tight-knit, inner circle, but has had to work hard for the position. He dismissed what he called “the idea that I am somehow this all-powerful figure inside the White House.”

“What I’ve learned is that if I want my voice to be heard around the table,” Mr. Rove said, “it can’t simply be, ‘Well, he’s the long-term associate of Bush from Texas’ — I’ve got to dig in.”

And even as he prepares to leave his job, Mr. Rove showed that he is still very much the political maestro trying to corral his party, taking a call from Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, the general chairman of the Republican National Committee, while waiting for a table. He noted afterward that Mr. Martinez had recently been quoted criticizing fellow Republicans on immigration — questioning the approaches of the Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Mr. Rove said he reminded Mr. Martinez that the blame should be focused on a Democrat, namely Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, for what Mr. Rove characterized as failing to shepherd a comprehensive immigration plan the president supported. (Mr. Reid has placed the blame on the White House, saying it failed to forge the political consensus needed to pass the plan.)

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“The dividers, over the last six years,” he said, “have been the Democrats, who have routinely said he was not elected, he’s illegitimate, he’s a liar, he deliberately misled the country.”

Mr. Rove was asked whether harsh Republican attacks on the national security credentials of various Democrats in 2002, orchestrated by him, had added to the climate. Among the advertisements that year was one from the Georgia Senate race in which the Republican, Saxby Chambliss, called the Democratic incumbent, Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran soft on defense and flashed the menacing image of Osama Bin Laden.

“President Bush and the White House don’t write the ads for Senate candidates,” Mr. Rove said, calling himself “a convenient scapegoat,” and blaming Democrats for their losses.

Democrats and even some Republicans have criticized Mr. Rove this week for what they have described as a single-minded pursuit of his goal of a “durable” Republican majority, with policies aimed at stealing away traditional Democratic constituencies like Latinos or weakening Democratic power bases like unions.

Voicing indignation at such critiques, he said, “With all due respect, don’t you think they would like to have a durable Democratic majority and put us as an un-durable minority?”

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That the question is even asked about the Republican pursuit of a durable majority suggest the arrogance of Democrats and the media when it comes to politics. It is as if they view such things as the Democrats' birthright. I think Rove showed great restraint in describing only a small part of the democrat divisiveness they have demonstrated over the last six plus years. It is an old Democrat trick to do something divisive and then blame the opposition for splitting the country because they don't agree with them.