The New Republic

Karl Rove's pre-2000 victories were all in Southern states (such as Texas and Alabama) where it would be hard for a conservative Republican NOT to win. Then, in the 2000 race, he came within a hair of throwing away Bush's victory by convincing himself that it was a sure win and that Bush should therefore spend his last few days trying to add California and New Jersey to his list of states -- both of which he lost by a landslide. If it hadn't been for the malignant stellar conjunction of Ralph Nader, the Electoral College, the boobs who designed the Palm Beach ballot, the US Supreme Court (maybe), and Gore's own initial decision to try to cherry-pick his way to a dishonest win in Florida instead of immediately demanding a statewise recount (as he was legally entitled to do) and then fighting to keep that recount's rules honest, Rove would have ended up as a national laughingstock. And after that, had it not been for the inestimable assistance provided to him by Osama bin Laden (combined with the fact that the Democrats hd been laboring for over three decades to establish themselves as the Dove Party in the eyes of the voters, with considerable success), the GOP would then have been creamed in both the 2002 and 2004 elections. "Brilliant strategist", my eye.

- moomaw1

September 5, 2006 at 4:39am

David: Who's the editor here? You're the only one who seems to understand that when writing for the web, there's a need for frequent paragraphs (as with a newspaper). It's hard to read so much densely constructed text on the screen. Please get the message out.

- wake2131

September 5, 2006 at 3:14pm

Rove has a theory that there is a small portion of the electorate who simply vote for the person they think is actually going to win. The CA and NJ trips were designed to make the campaign appear confident and assured of winning, thus "appealing" to these voters. Silly and ineffective? Probably.

- mcclelland

September 5, 2006 at 4:58pm

If so, doesn't Rove deserve some credit for the superior micro-targeting of previously-low turnout exurbanite communities, church groups etc? Hard to imagine rustbelt, lunchbucket Ohio going (R) without the brilliant organizational effort the Republicans mounted in that state's exurban areas in 2004. Presumably some of this credit goes to Rove?

- teplukhin

September 5, 2006 at 5:13pm

...went (R) by a 12-point landslide in 1988 (4 points more than Bush's Sr.'s nationwide margin), (D) by only 2 points in 1992 (3 points less than Clinton's nationwide margin), and (R) by 4 points in 2000 (when Gore won the nationwide vote). And this time Rove is faced with a task -- magically turning crap into gold -- that would have given Apollonius of Tyre pause. And he is very clearly no Apollonius. His only strategy this time seems to be to keep yelling "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" long after Toto has pulled it down and a landslide majority of the voters are already firmly satisfied that they've seen the true Wizard.

- moomaw1

September 5, 2006 at 8:56pm

Thanks. Appreciate as always the fact-based analysis. But what about turnout? At the county or precinct level, was it not true that Rove brought out more of the evangelicals and exurbanites to actually vote (and vote R) than in 1988 and 2000? Another myth?

- teplukhin

September 6, 2006 at 10:57am

...It's really, most sincerely a myth (to quote the Munchkins' coroner). Moreover, it's a myth initially propagated immediately after 2004 by liberals to console themselves for losing with the argument that they only lost because a tidal wave of religious fanatics and hicks came out to vote against gay marriage. (Michelle Cottle did so right here in TNR, and had to eat her words immediately afterwards.) When you look at the state-by-state and group-by-group patterns in both the actual voting returns and the CNN exit polls of 2004 voters (the latter adjusted to take account of the fact that GOP voters in general were less eager to talk to newspeople after voting, which explains the overall Democratic bias of the exit poll that misled so many Dems into premature congratulations), you see that both the total turnout AND the pro-Bush percentage of rural voters was no more than in 2000, and may actually have been slightly LESS. Certainly there was no unusual jump in either turnout or Bush's vote percentage in the states that had gay-marriage initiatives on their ballots. What did take a significant leap upwards from 2000 -- and put him over the top -- was Bush's percentages among suburban AND core urban voters, and among liberals (although of course he still lost by a landslide among the last two groups). He seems to have gained particularly dramatically among working-class white women. And the state where he had the biggest vote surge -- an increase of fully 6%, as against only 2% nationwide -- was none other than New York state. So Bush won on the national security issue, thanks to his increase among the very groups whom Rove was trying NOT to turn out. (Had I confirmed on examination that he actually had won because the Christian Zombies had marched out in 2004 to Get Those Fags, I would have officially despaired of Western civilization.)

- moomaw1

September 6, 2006 at 1:50pm

Yes, I knew about NY state and for that matter the same trend in Broward and Dade counties, FL. Actually, you lend more support to the thesis that national security Dems were the key to Bush's victory-- IIRC there were ca 100,000 Gore2000 voters in NYC who shifted to Bush in 2004, and about 200,000 Gore2000 voters in Florida who shifted to Bush in 2004. I agree totally that the "moral issues" and "jesusland" spin were completely bogus. My only point about Rove was his skill tactically in finding and getting people to the polling place, not so much the salience of religious or "moral issues". btw most evangelicals live in suburbs, a cateogry that includes the exurbs I mentioned, as well as, increasingly, the white working class. I wasn't referring to rural voters. So perhaps Rove did indeed achieve greater turnout among exurbanites (and white workers) via the national security message.

- teplukhin

September 7, 2006 at 7:28am