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Karl Rove and a Moment of Zen

Posted: July 15, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign | Tags: , , |33 Comments

“Rove accuses Obama of using ‘gutter politics’ against Romney”

I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you! How could St Karl even know of such things!

During then-Gov. George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign for president, Rove was accused of orchestrating a whisper campaign to suggest that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “had fathered an illegitimate black child.” In 2003, conservative columnist Robert Novak told federal prosecutors that Rove had also participated in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame in an effort to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, after he accused the Bush administration of invading Iraq under false pretenses.

Romney gives the impression he has something to hide by not releasing his taxes and not explaining the contradictions between the SEC filings, the FEC filings, and interviews he gave back when he was trying to prove he had the legal right to run for Massachusetts governor.

Romney can clean this entire thing up by actually answering questions about his Bain tenure and showing his tax returns like every one else–including his father–has done when running for president.  I’m tried of pearl clutching wingers who are trying to pretend his lack of honesty and openness isn’t shady as hell and that any of us that want real explanations are playing dirty politics.  Who believes this other than their idiot base who buy one lie after another anyway and ascribe to magical thinking?

Show us your taxes Mitt Shady!!!

33 Comments on “Karl Rove and a Moment of Zen”

  1. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 15, 2012 at 3:05 pm

    Rove is the master of those under the radar whisper campaigns. When he ran W’s campaign for governor against Ann Richards, leaflets were distributed in church parking lots etc with the rumor that Ann was a closet lesbian and a crook. The McCain whisper campaign in 2000 was the same thing, dirty lying rotten politics at it’s worst. Rove should eat shit and die miserably.

  2. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 15, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    Oh #retroactively is trending on twitter and is hilarious. Worst talking point evah!

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      July 15, 2012 at 3:09 pm

      I know … who the hell ever gets to do that? That’s going to really play well on main street.

      • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
        July 15, 2012 at 3:17 pm

        Gillespie really set things on fire with that stupid bit. I don’t know if that was planned or he just said whatever came to mind but it’s a killer anyway.

  3. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    July 15, 2012 at 3:12 pm

    I don’t know if Romney can really clear all of it up. The offshore accounts are going to dog him whether he releases his tax returns or not. I started reading Nicholas Shaxson’s book and the tax haven issue could be dynamite!

    • minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
      July 15, 2012 at 9:23 pm

      BB, remember what you said about McCain’s team talking about Romney’s taxes?

      Cannonfire

      One outsider has, in fact, seen the tax returns that have aroused so much curiosity. John McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, vetted Romney when they were considering Mitt for the veep spot in 2008, in the process going over 20 years’ worth of tax forms. (Schmidt, the primary source for the movie Game Change, probably wishes that he had gone over 20 years worth of Sarah Palin’s report cards.) What did Schmidt see? I don’t know, but the fact that McCain didn’t pick Romney may tell us much.

      In January, Schmidt offered these cryptic — or maybe not so cryptic — words:

      I think that he`s the front-runner in the race. I think he`s the most likely person to be the nominee of the party. And I would never advise him to disadvantage himself with issues like his taxes, against what is precedent for campaigns.

      I think that he will probably do what presidents and vice presidents typically have done with regard to the release of their taxes. But if it was good enough for John Kerry, it ought to be good enough for Mitt Romney. He shouldn`t release information that disadvantages himself and opens up a lot of attacks.

      Now, I don’t think you have to subject this text to a hyper-critical between-the-lines reading to conclude that Steve Schmidt thinks that those tax records, if public, would give Romney a black eye.

      • minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
        July 15, 2012 at 9:24 pm

        Schmidt’s remarks place this Fox piece — yes, Fox — in a new light:

        …based on the one year of tax returns he’s publicly released so far, Mitt Romney himself wouldn’t make the cut as a vice presidential contender if he wasn’t already at the top of the ticket.

        Think about it. What candidate for president — even a GOP candidate for president — would pick a guy as a running mate who would only hand over one year of tax returns, as Mitt Romney has done?

        And would anybody pick that guy if that one tax return revealed Swiss Bank accounts and more than $30 million in off shore accounts in the Cayman Islands– especially in an election year when public anger at Wall Street remains so high?

        The answer is: no. No presidential candidate in their right mind would pick such a candidate as their running mate.

        Those words were written by Joe Trippi, the Democratic consultant. (He worked with John Edwards, which means that he knows a thing or two about candidates who need close vetting.) Now I’m wondering: Has Trippi learned any hidden info from Schmidt? Yeah, these two guys work for different parties, but they are in the same business, and they have appeared together on teevee. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn — retroactively, as it were — that the two guys have gone out for beers on one or two occasions.

  4. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 15, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    Read the Rove piece and the whine level of this bunch of babies is amazing. They can hand it out but they can’t take it at all 😉

  5. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    July 15, 2012 at 4:07 pm

    George Will: Romney ‘losing at this point in a big way’

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/15/george-will-romney-losing-at-this-point-in-a-big-way/

    Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday said a series of attacks and questions about Mitt Romney’s association with Bain Capital, his tax returns and offshore investments were adding up to trouble for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

    “Mitt Romney’s losing at this point in a big way,” Will told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “If something’s going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why — given that Mr. Romney knew the day that [Sen. John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again — that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest.”

    “He’s done nothing illegal, nothing unseemly, nothing improper, but lots that impolitic — and he’s now in the politics business,” Will added.

    • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
      July 15, 2012 at 4:24 pm

      In the same vein, it’s not just Democrats anymore.

      Conservative Pundits Wonder If Romney’s Hiding Something In Unreleased Tax Returns

      It’s a bad sign for Mitt Romney when conservatives begin to question why the presumptive Republican nominee won’t release more of his tax returns. But on Sunday, that’s what happened. Conservative analysts joined Democrats in wondering whether Romney is just being impolitic in not releasing several years worth of returns — or whether he’s trying to hide something.
      […]
      “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear,” said conservative columnist George Will, on ABC’s “This Week.” “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

      On the ABC roundtable, Republican strategist Matthew Dowd had a similar take.

      “There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it,’” Dowd said. “So there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.”

      “Many of these politicians think, ‘I can do this. I can get away with this. I don’t need to do this, because I’m going to say something and I don’t have to do this,’” Dowd said. “If he had 20 years of ‘great, clean, everything’s fine,’ it’d all be out there, but it’s arrogance.”

  6. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    July 15, 2012 at 4:25 pm

    Uh oh…. One of Romney’s former Bain partners says he was “legally” the CEO until 2012.

    Despite Romney’s statements that he left in 1999, Conard’s new remarks suggest that, in fact, Romney’s continued ownership of the firm enabled him to negotiate a better exit deal. “We had to negotiate with Mitt because he was an owner of the firm,” Conard said.
    The legal transfer of ownership dragged on for three years after Romney’s informal departure to run the Olympics in Salt Lake City, Conard said, because Romney was aggressively negotiating his retirement package and compensation with executives and lawyers at the company.

    “He’d created a lot of franchise value, and we were going to pay him for that,” Conard said, adding: “We had a very complicated set of negotiations that took us about two years for us to unwind. During that time a management committee ran the firm, and we could hardly get Mitt to come back to negotiate the terms of his departure because he was working so hard on the Olympics.”

  7. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 15, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    Josh Marshall at TPM, this post has a great long comment from a Wall St guy in it which may help explain this phenomenon.

    Rotting from the Top

    Ed Gillespie is getting a world of criticism this morning for ‘retroactively retired’ and the whole Mitt team is getting lectured on extremely poor handling of the mix of offshore accounts, outsourcing, and Romney’s quantum physics approach to having been CEO and not CEO of Bain at the same time. But any campaign operative or observer will tell you that it’s very, very difficult for a campaign to be more forthcoming, agile or aware than the candidate himself.

  8. HT's avatar HT says:
    July 15, 2012 at 5:36 pm

    perhaps Mitt should invest in a fainting couch and give his wife strands of worry pearls so she can clutch them. He should have been well aware what he was getting into – it’s not his first time after all.
    Rove, the dirtiest of the dirty political operatives – perhaps he needs a fainting couch too.

    • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
      July 15, 2012 at 6:52 pm

      I like ABL’s response to the Rove whine:

      And with those words, Irony farted, hiccuped, lapsed into a coma, and was just pronounced dead. Irony is survived by its siblings Snark and Sarcasm, and its children, Side-Eye and One Arched Eyebrow.

  9. minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    July 15, 2012 at 6:25 pm

    They are all assholes…and whoever lets Romney get away with this crap are assholes too!

    • HT's avatar HT says:
      July 15, 2012 at 7:33 pm

      So true. REminds me of that classic song – Fred Astaire if I recall correctly. “How could you believe me when I said I loved you when you know I’ve been a liar all my life”.
      It really is a song and it really sort of fits this situation.

      • Beata's avatar Beata says:
        July 15, 2012 at 8:08 pm

        Here it is, HT:

      • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
        July 15, 2012 at 8:10 pm

        I thought this was my mom’s cousin but whoops wrong movie … mom’s cousin was Betty Garrett … she was in Anchors Aweigh … my bad

      • HT's avatar HT says:
        July 15, 2012 at 8:26 pm

        Beata, thanks – if you listen to the lyrics and look at Fred as Romney and Jane as his supporters – bingo.

        Dak, Betty Garrett was one of my favorite actresses. My Sister Eileen – perfection. Did you ever meet her? Gosh, I’m gushing.

        • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
          July 15, 2012 at 10:09 pm

          I did when I was little but by the time I got older she got that gig on Laverne & Shirley and stayed in Hollywood. She just died actually, last year.

  10. List of X's avatar List of X says:
    July 15, 2012 at 10:30 pm

    I think Karl Rove is extremely upset that he can’t use the “he sired a black child” rumor against Obama.

  11. RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
    July 16, 2012 at 12:08 am

    A private equity person takes a look at Bain and Romney. This should be an eye opener and perhaps make Glenn Kessler poop his pants.

    Romney’s Bain Yielded Private Gains, Socialized Losses

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-15/romney-s-bain-yielded-private-gains-socialized-losses.html

    • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
      July 16, 2012 at 12:09 am

      Success, entrepreneurship, risk taking and wealth creation deserve to be celebrated when they are the result of fair play and hard work. President Barack Obama is correct in distinguishing the patient creation of value for the benefit of investors through genuine operational improvements and growth — the true mission of private equity — from the form of rigged capitalism that was practiced by some in the industry in the past when debt was cheap and plentiful.

      While Bain Capital wasn’t alone in using financial engineering to turbo-charge its returns, it was among the most aggressive under Romney’s leadership. Enriching investors by taking leveraged bets isn’t a qualification for a job requiring long-term vision and concern for public welfare. It is appropriate to point that out to voters.

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