Here’s a sterling example of Villager fluffing at its most egregious. Grifters gonna grift, and (h/t commentor AA+ Bonds) the Turdblossom wants to make his grift “a permanent presence“:
… Perhaps no one, besides Romney himself, will have a greater influence on the course of the Republican presidential campaign this fall than Rove, the brash, often-controversial architect of Bush’s two successful bids for the White House.
Bush called Rove “Turd Blossom,” a term Texans use to describe a flower that grows from a pile of cow dung. This year, thanks to the American Crossroads “Super PAC” organization that he co-founded, Rove will have vast resources to fertilize Romney’s campaign: a massive wallet, one of the loudest megaphones in conservative media, and close ties to Romney’s campaign.
It’s a dramatic re-emergence for Rove, who resigned as Bush’s deputy chief of staff in 2007 amid questions about his role in the firing of a federal prosecutor.
In an interview with Reuters, Rove described his vision for Crossroads, which he founded with his friend Ed Gillespie in 2010. Crossroads – which has received seven-figure donations from several wealthy Republicans – hopes to spend $300 million on this election.
Beyond helping Romney match Democratic President Barack Obama’s vast fundraising effort, Rove said he wants Crossroads to be a permanent figure on the political landscape – a big-money, independent group that works in concert with the Republican Party on strategy and involves its most influential donors…
A lifelong dedication to the “art” of ratfvcking won Rove the chance to surf the Bush crime family’s second-generation assault on American democracy via his mancrush’s daddy’s hand-packed Supreme Court. As a political strategist, he hasn’t been much more successful than Mark Penn, but if he can keep bamboozling the GOP’s sugar daddies with the willing assistance of his media-based co-conspirators, he’ll never have to go out and look for a real job doing honest work.
hildebrand
Speaking of village idiots:
No, I didn’t read the damned article. Cillizza deserves to rot in the Eighth Circle of Hell.
edit: blockquote fail
Southern Beale
I thought that was illegal …? That there couldn’t be any “coordination” …?
Southern Beale
@hildebrand:
Yes. See: It’s always good news for Republicans!
gaz
If this is anything like his “Permanent Majority” I fear for the future of Crossroads.
heh.
Culture of Truth
Just six more months is this insanity, and then we can relax. In 2013 it will be a whole new crop of insanity.
Forum Transmitted Disease
VICTORY! UNLIMITED CAMPAIGN CASH! CITIZENS UNITED! OBAMBI! WHITE POWER!
fuck that last keeps slipping in there sorry guys
Roger Moore
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t “working in concert” with a political party undermine the whole “independent group” part of that statement? What’s next, the “independent” groups sharing half their board of directors with the party? How close can these groups get to a party or candidate before they’re in legal hot water?
kindness
One day some poor soul will kill Carl Rove. When that day happens, I will feel bad for that person, bad for Carl Rove’s family but I won’t feel bad for Carl Rove. Am I a monster? No, but I ain’t Budda either as anyone here already knows.
gaz
@Roger Moore: Orwell weeps
gaz
@kindness: Karl Rove, man. With a K. Just like Marx ;)
Just sayin’
gaz
@kindness: also, your screenname is expensive. Whenever I see you, I take a toke.
I should have never started that game… heh
PeakVT
@gaz: Maybe Karl should double-check “The Math” this time.
Villago Delenda Est
The vermin of the Village love them some fascist shitstain grifters.
Which is why we need that meteor, stat.
gaz
@PeakVT: Karl doesn’t need math. Math is for mortals. Karl has something more powerful than mere math. He has the exquisitely preserved taint of one Ronald Wilson Reagan, which he’s fashioned into a voodoo-fetish-object. He recharges it with the souls of aborted liberals, harvested by his minion, the Cheney Demon. He has no use for your silly maths, plebe!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gaz: I’m reminded of Doctor Who: “This is a kindness.”
Forum Transmitted Disease
@kindness: Sat next to Mr. Rove at “Book of Mormon” when I was in NY this summer. That was part of his recon phase, getting ready for how to deal with the Mormon issue when it came up for Romney. It was obvious to me that they already knew he was going to be the guy.
Anyhow, I sat next to him, he seemed a bit humorless, but I would be too if I were having to see a musical as part of work. Not my cup of tea for a seatmate, but jeez, I wouldn’t have killed the guy. Thought never crossed my mind, truth be told.
General Stuck
If we had to have a Citizens United, and history has given us one, this is the kind of big talk wingnut over reach that needs to occur, if we are ever to be rid of that evil court decision. And if we’re lucky, the public will come to thinking that the reams of horseshit that will soon smear across their teevee screens like never before, will see Rove and his brain trust wingnuts on the supreme court, all as turd blossoms, and bring out the national Roundup.
We would be in a bigger world of hurt, if gawd hadn’t made our wingnuts wingnutty. Like the sun, the moon, and the stars. Predictable for fucking up their own wet dreams come true.
gaz
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): OT: You never posted back on the federales thread, so I didn’t get a chance there – but I wanted to say, sorry for ripping into you on the immigration thread. is an issue most dear to me, and I tend to get very very angry about it sometimes. No hard feelings, man. I get all upset about that stuff all the time. My apologies to you!
and cheers.
rlrr
@Roger Moore:
IOKIYAR
kindness
Don’t mean to be a bummer or anything and I absolutely don’t want America to get to the point where we just out and kill our adversaries, but…the way the right is driving things I fear some of them want the US to be a wild wild west again (not the TV series although Artimus Gordon would be a fun person to have a drink with). Why? Why would they want that? I don’t know. The small mind thinks it can wipe out it’s demons and scare the rest to inaction. The result would suck. Wouldn’t matter the numbers on which side went down. But the dynamic the right is taking is to ramp the crazy dial up past 11 and then scratch their heads & wonder why some crazy person took shots at some public person.
Why do they do it? I think the right thinks it can win that way. Win at all costs. Win at any costs. It is the right’s mantra right now. Be careful what you wish for Karl. Be very careful.
PS – Thanks for the spelling tip. I should have remembered that.
gaz
@kindness: They do it because by and large they are reactionary and vile. Dumb and mean go together like PB&J
Today’s GOP is the party for self-identified sociopaths. Atlas Shrieked.
JGabriel
Reuters:
So the GOP is going to rely on the architect of the permanent majority, cause he always has the numbers?
I suppose I feel mild concern.
.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So Citizen United is really about giving dorks like Rove life time employment (at lest until the suckers figure out how useless PACs are)? “No conservative left behind” seems to be the Right’s motto.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gaz: Not worried. I’ve been trying to come up with a solution that would actually get implemented. Not doing very good. I’m in a similar position to you: Up until the 50s, it worked great for both sides that we didn’t really enforce any kind of border.
I don’t hold out hope for adult discussions on this until a major issue like a war or an asteroid threatens us.
kindness
@gaz: I used to be a DJ at my college radio station. Pulled the Grateful Dead Live taper shift. My name there was Da Kind….but that is just too forward for the world wide web.
gaz
@kindness: generally I hate being pedantic, so I don’t usually correct spelling, but in this case, I was lookin out for you. like I’d do for a friend that was going to go out with something stuck in their teeth =)
I have my own problems spelling the names of infamous propagandists. I still can’t spell Goebbels half the time, either =)
apologies to Godwin
Valdivia
@hildebrand:
Next up at The Fix: Why Romney’s awkwardness and the fact no one likes him will win him the election.
God I hate these people.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@kindness: The “Wild West” had far more gun control, ethnic tolerance, and refusal to get involved in the private business of others than today’s Asshole Party member would ever tolerate. I think the True Believers (TM) vision of the future of America looks far more like Brazil or China does today than the American West of the late 1800s.
eemom
Kudos to AL for banning that dipshit Veritard yesterday and posting this today.
He must be apoplectic with frustration. Tantrums, foot stomping, the whole works. Tee hee.
Randy P
@General Stuck:
Do we have any evidence that the low-info voters know about Citizens United and will understand why there is so much more money in the Republican pot this year?
rlrr
@Valdivia:
I remember how Obama’s popularity was going to hurt him 2008…
eemom
@hildebrand:
Cilizza is just a despicable little cockroach. All he needs is one good stomp.
Catsy
@gaz:
LOL. For some reason this reminds me of the Game of Thrones
intoxicationdrinking game.Xecky Gilchrist
@General Stuck: If we had to have a Citizens United, and history has given us one, this is the kind of big talk wingnut over reach that needs to occur, if we are ever to be rid of that evil court decision
I agree, but I think the thing that’ll really torpedo Citizens United is if they find out it doesn’t actually get Republicans elected any more than their secret illegal underhanded campaign-cash-funneling schemes were. (ETA: This kind of thing.)
rikryah
say it with me boys and girls..
G-R-I-F-T-E-R
gaz
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I feel you. For me it’s mostly a ground-game – entirely local, and day to day issues like finding housing, or helping them understand and apply for our WIC programs and such. My wife and I help “cheat” the system when it means keeping the families whole. ICE would probably hate us but I’m not afraid to admit we help these folks with their paperwork, etc and try to eke a modicum of social justice out of an entirely rigged system. That’s the only solution I have, other than GWP.
KG
In defense of GWB and Jeb, the Bush’s history goes much further back than two generations.
Valdivia
not to harp on this but it is like the Village is writing one article over and over just changing the ‘problem’: Obama is in trouble because _____________ (fill in as you please)
ugh.
@rlrr: oh I had forgotten about that one!
gaz
@Valdivia: It’s frustrating.
I’m not sure how effective it is to reclaim it by turning it into a ridiculous meme (like BothSidesDoIt(TM) ) but it sure is cathartic! =)
JGabriel
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Given that the whole anti-immigration brouhaha was resurrected during the Bush administration while we were still mired in Iraq, I don’t have much faith in war or asteroids smoothing the path for “adult discussions”.
For instance, let me give you the probable conservative response to the idea of an extinction level asteroid projected to land in the US:
.
rlrr
Karl Rove: http://bit.ly/Imw71S
Mnemosyne
As I said when this came up yesterday, Rove is playing the Great and Powerful Oz on the front of the stage while he and his minions are frantically working behind the curtain to do their real work, using Crossroads money to torpedo Democrats in down-ticket races.
Don’t be fooled — Rove knows perfectly well that he’s got a dud of a candidate, a surefire loser, so he’s concentrating all of his resources on local races. All of this talk about how many resources they’re going to pour into Romney is a feint to distract attention from the real goal: retaining the House and taking the Senate.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@eemom: Already back as “Cato”. Bragging about how he will never be stopped.
gaz
@JGabriel: LOL.
Fuck, I think you’re serious
/cries
Calouste
Not sure if it has been mentioned before, but Crossroads is the place where you sell your soul to the devil, right?
rlrr
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Maybe his IP address can be banned. He’s obviously posting from work or his parent’s basement.
Citizen_X
@Culture of Truth:
Maybe something like this.
@kindness:
From the link:
FlipYrWhig
So the consensus of Beltway contrarians (neat oxymoron, that) is that in 2012 coolness costs you in the election, but voters have no problem with a reputation as a flip-flopper. When he reads this shit, John Kerry has to be pissed off beyond belief.
gaz
@Citizen_X: Funny how they spike whenever a dem is in the WH, huh?
Nah, the wingnuts aren’t racist at all… it’s a coincidence – every time it happens.
Oh, and stormfront is a LIBRUL BLOG, dontcha know!
Catsy
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
There’s a certain amount of irony in that. As I recall, in Roman politics Cato the Elder was a staunch defender of strict morality, conservatism and the status quo.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@KG: W or his dad had nothing on grandpa Prescott. There was a man who deserved the gallows for his work with and support of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution”. And yeah, he knew what the machines were being used for.
No to mention his involvement in the plot to overthrow and execute FDR. Thank God they picked exactly the wrong guy (promptly went and ratted them out) for that job.
hildebrand
@Valdivia: Right. Though on this one, I am still trying to figure out how Cillizza got from A to wherever he wound up.
Taking a deep breath – going to read the article – be right back.
Yutsano
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I am okay with this, but I think unbreakable chains forged in a star is too good for Karl.
/spoilers
FlipYrWhig
@Catsy: Yeah, I pointed out to him on one of those threads that the last thing Cato Uticensis / The Censor / The Elder would do was brag about wealth and free spending. Then the smart kids came and trumped me on Roman history.
JGabriel
__
__
Randy P:
I’m not sure “low-info” is an accurate description of the voters Crossroads targets.
Low-info generally indicates people who are poor, often hard-working with multiple jobs, who don’t have time for news — or money & time for education. And they typically vote Democratic.
The people Crossroads targets are more frequently some variant of middle-class, with enough spare time to watch Fox News on a regular basis. These aren’t so much low-info voters — they have plenty of info, it’s just that most of it is bad info, i.e., propaganda.
Malinformed Voters voters might be a more accurate way to describe them.
ETA: Not meant as an argument with you, Randy P. Your question just provided a handy peg to discuss a term that I’ve found problematic for a while.
.
Catsy
@JGabriel:
You mean a war like the ones we’ve been fighting for the last decade running?
Or a major issue affecting the survival of the entire planet, like, say, rising sea levels and catastrophic climate change?
You might as well declare us fucked and dipped.
beltane
Geez, you can’t take Republicans anywhere these days http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/25/donald-trump-appearance-scottish-parliament
If Americans rioted every time a right-wing gasbag addressed Congress we’d have to devote all our waking moments to rioting.
Valdivia
@hildebrand:
Thanks for reading so I don’t have to. :)
Forum Transmitted Disease
@rlrr: I think if that were possible, John would have used it on some folks a long time ago. Maybe things have changed.
Personally I’m quite opposed to the idea, myself. If we can’t deal with a patsy like Cato/Veritard/RealityChoke, we’re never going to be able to deal with the real deal.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And we are required by law to note that Mitt Romney is a severely conservative successful business man married to Ann Romney, a hard working, stay at home mother.
Teddy's Person
I’m new around these parts and really wish I had something thoughtful to contribute, but Bushies make my blood boil. So, Karl Rove can just blow me!!!
JGabriel
@Catsy: No biggie, but you’ve accidentally attributed Belafon’s words to me.
.
Martin
@JGabriel: You realize you spent 5 paragraphs trying to say retards?
Scamp Dog
@gaz:
You, SIr or Madam, are a genius! I’m stealing that for my next discussion with a Randroid.
Catsy
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
This is a false dichotomy. The justification for banning turd burglars like Falsitas isn’t because we can’t deal with them (plenty of commenters routinely shred what passes for an argument in their worlds), but because they are a complete waste of time and bandwidth who contribute nothing of value and go a long way towards derailing discussions that might actually be productive in the absence of their relentless bad-faith trolling.
The best that can be said for their existence is that they allow commenters to sharpen their claws on a target nobody really gives a shit about. And that just ain’t worth it.
gaz
@Teddy’s Person:
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I for one, felt that “So, Karl Rove can just blow me” was a thoughtful, articulate, and well-measured response to this shit. =)
Cheers
BGinCHI
Not sure if anyone linked to this Kthug post:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/american-austerity/
Don’t you just want to roll that chart up, put a poisoned dart in it, and blow it into the neck of every loudmouthed Republican in this country?
eemom
I think AL booted the “Cato” incarnation yesterday, but I could be wrong.
gaz
@Scamp Dog: Glad I could contribute to your work! hehehehe
bobbo
Isn’t the Crossroads where you go to meet the devil?
Chuck Butcher
We should all remember that Karl had the math, and may still have it.
JGabriel
@Martin:
Nah, read it again. I spent five paragraphs saying “willfully self-deluded assholes”. I wouldn’t call them retards — retards have an honest excuse.
.
hildebrand
Good lord, Cillizza is opaque.
aimai
Maybe someone has said this upthread but I’m old enough to remember when the notion of this kind of money, and this kind of third element in an election, was absolutely unheard of. I mean, there have always been kingmakers and millionaires but I don’t remember ever hearing about this kind of totally independent, startrekkian doomsday machine style fundraising and expenditure. Karl Rove is an apparatchik. But an apparatchik with 300 million to spend is a kingmaker. Even the Koch’s aren’t spending 300 million of their own money on this election.
aimai
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
House dems got caught flat footed in a number of contentious House districts, and the wingnuts dropped in extra outside CU cash and maybe won a few seats they wouldn’t have otherwise. I think the DCCC will be on alert for that with some cash of their own this time to counter Rove’s sneakiness.
PIGL
@rikryah: L-O-U-S-E.
gaz
(i could have SWORN i responded to this one already)
@kindness:
you too?
I did back in the day. My wife, more recently. She had a spanish language segment called ask a white girl (title was in spanish though), you’ve heard of ask a mexican. She’d answer everything from serious questions, to silly stuff like “Why do you white people ALWAYS have a beverage in your hand” – one of the more popular requests…apparently we drink stuff a lot. Anyway, Way more clever than anything I ever did. That’s what sucks about marrying my intellectual better. she gets to all of the really good ideas before I can. heh.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JGabriel:
__
Somebody, I think it might have been El Cid, coined the phrase High-misinformation voters. And yes, I think there is a useful distinction to be made between them and the voters who don’t have a taste for following politics and don’t watch the news. On the other hand we do have to recognize that the propaganda which Rove’s Crossroads will be catapulting has it uses with both the high-misinformation and the low-info voters. The former group it drives to the polls to vote GOP (OMG! Scary Dems!), the latter group it turns cynical and encourages them to not vote at all (BothSidesDoIt! The System Is Rigged so why bother?). We have to fight them on both fronts.
gaz
@JGabriel: Youch! It’s getting hot in here!
/grabs a fire extinguisher
General Stuck
@Randy P:
This is only the second election since CU was decided, and wasn’t near the degree as we will see in 2012. But to answer your question, I don’t know how much they are aware at this point. But I think the wingnut base got a taste of it in their crazy primary. It will likely take a few cycles before it all fully sets in. And also the level of pay to play between elections is likely to skyrocket as well. But that is not as obvious as CU campaign effects.
AA+ Bonds
Thanks for the h/t but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the original link was posted by V-tas
and promptly removed, which is why I reposted it
Which makes some of the comments here a little funny . . .
JGabriel
@aimai:
Given current law, how would we know?
.
Valdivia
@hildebrand:
this is rich after Romney gave a speech yesterday in which he didn’t give one specific thing he would do. He will deliver America the Beautiful?
Idiots.
Amir Khalid
@Valdivia:
Mitt tends to duck policy specifics, doesn’t he? He knows what policy agenda the Teabagger tendency wants, but he also knows it won’t fly with the rest of the electorate. As for what Mitt himself wants to do, I doubt even he knows. So he does his darndest to keep the subject from ever coming up. I do wonder how far he’ll get doing that, how long your media will make excuses for him.
Amir Khalid
@Cato:
Are you really him? You didn’t say
Scamp Dog
Actually, we need two meteorites, one for the political village in DC (aka Versailles on the Potomac), and the other for the media village in NYC (aka Versailles on the Hudson).
Origuy
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
You could have at least spilled a drink on him.
gaz
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe he finally got around to looking up the term.
Frankensteinbeck
Doesn’t Rove have a history of vastly overestimating how much money he’s going to bring in, then frittering the money away and getting into severe financial trouble?
@Teddy’s Person: and @gaz:
I’d say you’re upholding the finest traditions of the Balloon Juice commentariat. I for one am proud to have you on the team.
mclaren
I’ve been re-reading Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, and I have to say…this stuff has been going on for 50 years now. Nixon started it, Reagan picked up the ball and ran with it, Dubya industrialized it.
Now dirty tricks and cash bribes in brown paper bags and stacked courte decisions by politicized appointees and rigged kangaroo court trials of dissenters and New York Times far-right propaganda disguised as “opinion pieces” by major political figures are the rule rather than the exception.
We had a chance to put an end to it by sending Richard Nixon to prison. We didn’t. That sent a message to all the ratfuckers:
It’s open season on logic and facts, boys!
Gemina13
My mother used that term to refer to a particularly nasty-smelling fart. I think of Karl Rove in the same way.
danielx
Karl Rove, the ratfucker’s ratfucker, mentioned as the subject of a sentence including “real job” and “honest work”.
Even granted that it’s about how he’ll never have to perform either of those tasks, just having his name in proximity to either of those concepts causes me to have a sort of allergic reaction. My entire field of vision just turned red.
TenguPhule
And why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance like any patriotic American would have?