# Karl Rove

Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Prior to his White House appointments, he is credited with the 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial victories of George W. Bush, as well as Bush's 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns.

## Quotes

* As people do better, they start voting like Republicans...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.
** The New Yorker (February 19, 2001)
* We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!
** Ron Suskind, Esquire, January 2003
* 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.
** New York Times (June 23, 2005)
* I think it was Osama bin Laden’s [idea to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq].
** Mount Union Theater, Ohio, April 18, 2007
* We face a brutal enemy who will kill the innocent for one purpose and that is to gain control of the Middle East and to use the leverage of oil to bring down the West, and to attack us again.
** ‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 19, 2007. MSNBC.
* Just get me a fucking faith-based thing. Got it?
** Rove to then second-in-command of President Bush’s Office on Faith-Based Initiatives David Kuo, as reported in Kuo's book "Tempting Faith"
* Once again the powers of light and good have triumphed over the media!
** Journeys with George documentary on unspecified date during 2000 Bush Campaign

## About Karl Rove

* Both pro- and anti-immigrant voices characterize Latino immigrants as not only willing but desirous of the dirtiest, most difficult forms of labor, eager to do the work that no else will do...Karl Rove, Bush's then deputy chief of staff, articulated a more unvarnished version of this logic. Explaining the rationale behind the president's call for immigration reform, Rove told a Republican women's luncheon group: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas." Implicit in Rove's quip is the undocumented's presumed willingness to accept toilsome, low-status work.
** Cristina Beltrán The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity (2010)
* At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.
** Joseph Wilson, quoted in Timothy Noah (2003-09-16). "Did Rove Blow a Spook's Cover?". Slate.
* The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
** Suskind, Ron (2004-10-17). Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The New York Times Magazine.
*** Danner, Mark (2007). "Words in a Time of War: On Rhetoric, Truth and Power". in András Szántó. What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics (First edition ed.). Philadelphia, PA: PublicAffairs Reports. pp. 17. "... the unnamed official speaking to Suskind is widely known to be none other than the self-same architect of the aircraft-carrier moment, Karl Rove ..."
* All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all. Reality is what you say it is, ...
** Neal Gabler, Los Angeles Times; October 25, 2004
* He (Rove) is way beyond anything Nixon had at his disposal. He is closer to a behind-the-scenes Nixon operator named Murray Chotiner, who could cut off an opponent at the knees so quickly the person did not immediately realize he had been crippled. As I note in the book, the first time I heard the name Karl Rove was when I was asked if I knew anything about him by one of the Watergate special prosecutors who was investigating campaign dirty tricks. I didn't have any knowledge. But I recalled that question when working on this book, and located a memorandum in the files of the Watergate prosecutor's office that indicates they were asking others as well about Rove. Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him.
** Watergate veteran John Dean
* Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame's identity on July 11, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn't know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove, and he said that she worked at the Agency and worked on WMD.
** Matthew Cooper, former Time reporter, Sunday, August 19, 2007, Meet the Press
* As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign "in order to spend more time with family," a retrospective of his dirty tricks might be in order. Much is attributed to Rove, dubbed "Bush's Brain" by Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore -- yet very little sticks to the man.
** Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan "Rove's Science of Dirty Tricks" (August 15, 2007)
* Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better. or is this real?
** Anchor Megyn Kelly, in response to Rove's citing of unreported counties after Fox News declared Barack Obama had taken Ohio in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, November 6, 2012
** Quoted in Felix Gillette, "Welcome to My Living Room, Thank You for Spinning", BusinessWeek.com, November 6, 2012
* I think the president should have stood by his word, and that meant Karl should have left. [...] I think the president should have stood by the word that we said, which was that if you were involved in this in any way, then you would no longer be in this administration. And Karl was involved in it.
** Scott McClellan, about George W. Bush on the Plame affair, as quoted in McClellan: Bush did not live up to word on leak (June 2, 2008) by Ben Feller, The Philadelphia Inquirer
* I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
** Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002); referencing the positions of former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
* Karl Rove, George Bush's political mastermind, was crowing about his dream of installing a permanent Republican majority.
** Barack Obama A Promised Land (2020)