Voices
in plain sight – the plainer the
better. Federal election laws are
laughably weak, but they are supposed to bar a candidate’s campaign from “coordinating” with
“independent” Pacs, among them
Rove’s own American Crossroads
and Crossroads GPS.
Rove’s prominence is the easiest and most deliberately obvious way around the law. Deeply
respected (as well as feared and
despised) within the party for
his 40-year track record – not to
mention his access to Texas and
Texas-size donors — he acts publicly as a Bat Signal in the media
sky and privately as a clearinghouse of tactics, information, advice and fundraising intel.
This year, Svengali wanted Mitt
Romney to be the Republican
nominee. The former governor of
Massachusetts was well liked by
the Bush Family, Rove’s ultimate
patrons and longtime employers.
Ostensibly but not actually
neutral, Rove used his perch on
Fox News (run by his old Bush
Family friend Roger Ailes) to trash
Mitt’s GOP primary foes (Newt
Gingrich was a “whiner) and offer on-air counsel to Romney. “My
responsibility as an analyst was to
call them as I see them,” Rove told
HOWARD
FINEMAN
HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
me coolly, “and that naturally invites disagreement.”
Now, in the general election,
Rove can exert even more influence. Top Romney aide Beth Myers, who is in charge of vetting veep
contenders, got her training under
Rove in the 1980s. Campaign manager Matt Rhoades served as Rove’s
key “opposition research” person in the
2004 election, helping
Once
frame John Kerry as a
known
flip-flopping, French
as ‘Turd
fry loving, fop.
Blossom,’
To ensure that
later as ‘the
things go smoothly at Architect,’
Romney headquarRove, at 61,
ters, the campaign
is more
recruited as a senior
powerful
advisor Ed Gillespie,
than ever.”
a likable and effective GOP operative
and long time Rove friend who
helped found Crossroads.
Rove’s career is a testament to
Nietzsche’s dictum that whatever
doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. He learned as a teenager that
he was adopted. His stepfather
was gay. His mother committed
suicide when he was 20. He was
banished from President George
H.W. Bush’s 1992 campaign for
leaking an attack on a rival aide.