Defending Rove?

Kevin Williamson pens a defense of Karl Rove in National Review online and does a good job. But in doing so he manages to skirt THE issue that has brought Rove back into the national conversation.

I can agree with pretty much all that Kevin Williamson wrote. I have no problem with a political consultant who backs the candidate he believes is most likely to win, and Rove had a good track record.

But the thing that landed Rove back in the headlines recently is an article in the NY Times about WMDs in Iraq. Tons of them …. thousands of them.

And the Times accuses the Bush administration of covering it up.

Here’s my problem with Rove, he is “credited” with advising Bush to ignore the evidence of WMDs in Iraq, one of the primary reasons for the invasion. Keep in mind that Saddam was our sworn enemy and the last thing we wanted to experience after 9/11 was a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or atomic weapons. So Bush … and the UN … demanded that Saddam declare and surrender all his WMDs. As the NY Times now reports, this did not happen.

The Rove theory was that the ”no WMDs” battle had been lost and we must move on. Team Bush never fought back against the lie that there were no WMDs in Iraq. The lie that “Bush lied” became a “fact” because there was never any pushback even when the evidence was there. Even today, I will wager that most people will tell you that there were no WMDs found in Iraq. A good case can be made that the 2008 election was lost years before when Rove and Bush surrendered to the MSM and allowed them to get away with one of the greatest propaganda coups in modern times.

Rove may be very good at counting electoral college votes and supporting Republican candidates for office, but beyond that his strategic thinking is incredibly faulty and resulted in a stupendous loss of the Republican Party. And, by the way, George Bush is ultimately to blame for taking his advice.