The Artful Dodger

Back to the facts. The book is titled -- without a trace of irony -- "Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," and in it the Dough Boy describes what it's like to be an adjective:

"I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes."

Funny, he didn't mind when the unelected idiot in the Oval Office granted him the appropriately fragrant nickname "Turd Blossom." But, when reporters call him out for mudslinging and fear-mongering that, as "the architect," he obviously designed, he gets his bland, run-of-the-mill tighty-whities in a huge wad.

Seems the issue Rove has with "stupid journalists" is in the accusation that he was behind the infamous 2000 "push-poll" in South Carolina that insinuated John McCain (Raisin Brain's opponent in the GOP primary) had fathered an illegitimate Black baby.Here's the exchange with Matt Lauer this morning on that subject:

LAUER: And you say, "To believe all the bad things about Karl Rove. First you have to believe that the electorate is stupid. Easily misled by smash-mouth TV ads, dirty tricks, and fear-and-smear politics." I can't imagine you ever calling the American electorate stupid. Who would be so stupid to do that?

ROVE: Well those journalists were.

LAUER: Okay but isn't the rest of it somewhat true?

ROVE: No!

LAUER: The charges or the allegations or the constant comments you hear about Karl Rove, that he was the guy behind the whisper campaigns.

ROVE: In South Carolina.

LAUER: Right. That he was the guy with the push-poll question about John McCain, how would you feel about John McCain during the 2000 primaries if he were, by some chance, to have fathered an illegitimate black child. You say you had nothing to do with that.

ROVE: Nothing to do with it. In fact, you know, I write about this in detail in the book. This is the kind of, you know, this is, this is a kind of thing the media love. These kinds of allegations.

Not that it matters, but there were many lessor minions in the Bush Crime Family -- and in the GOP -- that fingered Rove as the creator of that nasty little campaign trick, but more curious is why Rove would run away from it? From the book's excerpts, it seems Rove spends much of the book denying any responsibility for the very actions that defined the eight-year reign of terror he clearly orchestrated. He distances himself from the lies that led this country into the illegal invasion of Iraq, and claims outright that Bush "did not lie" about the nonexistence of WMDs in Iraq (that rumor was just another Al Gore invention, don't you know).

He also denies that waterboarding is torture (but if it was, it was Nancy Pelosi's fault), reluctantly admits to some foot-dragging in the Crime Family's response to hurricane Katrina, but, yet again, blames Democrats in Louisiana for the ultimate failure there. As expected,he vehemently disavows any involvement in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity; any role in the investigation of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegleman; pretends the administration's stance on global warming was scientific and appropriate; insists that no Clinton budget surpluses were squandered because Bush oversaw -- under Rove's direction -- the longest period of economic growth since (saint) Reagan.

Wow, what's it like on Fantasy Island this time of year?

Incredibly, Rove even refuses to own-up to the well-accepted homosexuality of his own stepfather (who raised him), Louis Rove, an "out" gay man known for his multiple, intricate piercings and gold body jewelry.

"I don't know whether my father was, at the end of his life, gay or not. I just don't. I don't think so, but I don't know " My mother never said to us that their marriage fell apart because my father was gay."

That story, he suggests, was invented by -- guess who? -- the media.