Well, it’s about time.
Karl Rove has taken off the gloves and scored some pretty potent left hooks landing them directly on the chin of the President’s tormentors. Invoking 9/11, Rove slammed liberals for their approach to the war on terror:
“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,” Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, “I don’t know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble.”
The Democrat reaction was quick and predictable: How dare he try and divide the country. That’s our job!
Told of Mr. Rove’s remarks, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, replied: “In New York, where everyone unified after 9/11, the last thing we need is somebody who seeks to divide us for political purposes
Your absolutely right, Chuck. How can we forget Democrat clarion calls for unity with the Nazis, er…Republicans. And your unwavering support for our President Adolph, er…George Bush. And let’s not forget your tearful effort to bring all people of faith including members of the Theocracy, er…Christian religion together.
All of this talk of unity by the Democrats seems to have slipped my mind.
At any rate, Nancy Pelosi won’t take this lying down:
“The president wanted to go to Iraq in the worst possible way and he did,” Pelosi said. “The president is on the ropes.”
Um, begging your pardon Madame minority leader but in a war, isn’t it customary to like, you know, want to have the enemy on the ropes rather than our guy? Perhaps you’re having a slight enemy identification problem? Let me help you. You’re supposed to be on the side of the United States. Unaccustomed as you are to such a position, let me offer you some free advice. We’re the ones who didn’t fly airliners into skyscrapers killing 3000 innocent people.
And our maybe soon to be first female candidate for President Hillary Clinton, threw her burgeoning weight around on the issue as well. (Note to Hill: The seat of your pants appears to be getting a little tight. Try polyester):
“I would hope that you and other members of the administration would immediately repudiate such an insulting comment from a high-ranking official in the president’s inner circle,” Clinton said.
The question is repudiate what? As I write this, dozens of rightwing bloggers are combing the statements made by prominent liberals after 9/11. I guarantee you that they’re going to find plenty of ammunition. In the meantime, Hill…chill. After all, Rove used to the term “liberal” to describe those who wanted to offer therapy to terrorists. And we all know that doesn’t include you, right? You’re a centrist so you’ve got nothing to worry about.
As a matter of fact, Rove never said the word “Democrats” as far as I can tell. So unless the Democrats want to change the name of their party (or allow only liberals to be part of it) they really don’t have anything to complain about, do they? That is, unless they already are liberal and don’t want anyone to know. In which case, Rove just initiated the most important “outing” of a political party in history.
UPDATE
I love it when I’m right.
As I predicted above, righty bloggers have been scouring the net and have struck gold. Here are just a few of the dozens of statements by prominent liberals following September 11 that prove Karl Rove was indeed correct:
“In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who’s suffering. [But we must also think about] the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It’s all of our jobs to keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see [the terrorists] as a relative who’s dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There’s nothing better.”—Richard Gere
“I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement.”—Jimmy Carter on George Bush’s use of the phrase “Axis of Evil”
“Melt their weapons, melt their hearts, melt their anger with love.”—Shirley MacLaine on her anti-terrorism policy.
Liberal donor George Soros said that he felt we should have responded to 9/11 as if it were a crime, “The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate.” Soros also declared the war on terror was unwinnable:
“The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy.”
Just days after 9/11 a MoveOn.Org petition appeared urging “moderation and restraint and the use of “international judicial institutions:”
“We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of the United States of America and of countries around the world, appeal to the President of The United States, George W. Bush; ...and to all leaders internationally to use moderation and restraint in responding to the recent terrorist attacks against the United States.”
Flashback, December 2002: Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) exhibits the let’s-understand-why they-hate-us approach to fighting terrorism:
We’ve got to ask, why is this man [Osama bin Laden] so popular around the world? Why are people so supportive of him in many countries … that are riddled with poverty? He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven’t done that. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), 10/1/01, Roll Call: “I truly believe if we had a Department of Peace, we could have seen [9/11] coming.”
Al Sharpton, 12/1/02, New York Times, on the 9/11 attacks: “America is beginning to reap what it has sown.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, 3/1/2003, Toledo Blade: “One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped cast off the British crown.”
Cross Posted at Blogger News Network
3:46 pm
Rick,
You are right, they consider liberal synonymous with Democrat. Democrats took the bait, the Durbin statements will get a whole new public hearing. Durbin was criticizing the US, Rove was criticizing liberals like Durbin. What are they going to counter with, Howard Dean’s UBL deserves a fair trial?
6:01 pm
But did he mention Hitler?
Karl Rove make a typical political statement and a firestorm breaks out. Well, a firestorm among the Democrats, anyway, which I will admit is more akin to a tempest in a teapot. He said,
6:08 pm
The Truth Hurts Sometimes
Democrats are up in arms because Karl Rove called it as it is, and they don’t like it one bit:
Bush’s chief political adviser, Rove said in a speech Wednesday that “liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments a…
7:21 pm
The way to inflict the worst injuries on the liberals is to quote them. That’s why the MSM is so important.
8:14 pm
Many on the Right have also not been fans of Karl Rove… He has been blamed by some of my fellow conservatives for some of the non-conservative policies of the Bush administration.
But on foreign policy, Rove has actually been viewed, in some analysts of intra-administration politics, as a balance to the hard-line war hawks in the Bush administration. Some of them had wanted another pre-emptive war during the first term, and they expressed concerns, during the Fall of 2003, when it was reported that people like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist were advising President Bush to avoid any more such wars… [“No Wars in ‘04!“]
As for Rove’s current statements, I think that he was being excessively reductionist in those remarks… Something that one would expect more from some parts of the Blogosphere than from a White House advisor. But depending on the context and time constraints that those remarks were made in (I haven’t looked that up), that could be partly justified.
Asking for someone to resign over this is absurd. As for Dick Durbin, we will hopefully be able to defeat him in the next election.
8:16 pm
Sorry for the double-posting… I used the back button on my browser, and then forwarded back.
7:26 am
Umpire of The Duct-Taped Gerbil …
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … Just 3 days ‘til Monday! (and did you see yesterday’s Riley-turns-1 pics?)
3:09 pm
Karl Rove Is Evil, After All
Maybe not so much.
7:24 am
I don’t see the problem with treating the 9-11 attacks as a crime and not an act of war. If we had done that perhaps osama would be in a prison now and the guilty arrested and tried instead of osama still on the loose while our resources are inadvertantly being used as a proving ground for an increasingly terrorism capable and bomb making iraq insurgency. When a crime is commited the guilty are hunted down, without the thousands of innocent lives lost of mostly poor dark-skinned people. Rove is preaching to the converted. When he says liberals of course he is refering to dems rather than republicans, wouldn’t it be taken that way if Dean had talked about conservatives? Rove is a proven liar a creep such blather is expected and I agree that what he said is bullshit and lets quit hearing about it, totally un-newsworthy.
4:47 pm
valium overnight
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