[Mb-civic] Rove Offers Republicans A Battle Plan For Elections - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Rove Offers Republicans A Battle Plan For Elections

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006; A01

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove offered a biting preview of 
the 2006 midterm elections yesterday, drawing sharp distinctions with 
the Democrats over the campaign against terrorism, tax cuts and judicial 
philosophy, and describing the opposition party as backward-looking and 
bereft of ideas.

"At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally 
different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a 
post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That 
doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong 
-- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

Rove spoke at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee 
and, with RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, provided a campaign blueprint for 
fighting the Democrats. They spoke at the beginning of an important 
election year in which Republicans are battling historical trends, 
public unrest over Iraq and a spreading corruption scandal that together 
threaten to reduce the GOP majorities in the House and the Senate and 
possibly shift control of one or both chambers to the Democrats.

At a time when Democrats have staked their hopes in large part on the 
issue of corruption, Rove and Mehlman showed that Republicans plan to 
contest the elections on themes that have helped expand their majorities 
under President Bush. They see national security and the vigorous 
prosecution of the campaign against terrorism at the heart of the GOP 
appeal to voters.

Rove's RNC address was a rare public appearance at a time when he 
remains under investigation in the CIA leak case that resulted in the 
indictment and resignation of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. 
Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Despite the investigation, Rove is still Bush's 
top political adviser.

Taking no questions from the audience or the news media, Rove used his 
platform to excoriate Democrats for "wild and reckless and false 
charges" against Bush on the issue of domestic spying and what he called 
an attempted smear against Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. at his Supreme 
Court confirmation hearings last week. "Some members of the committee 
came across as mean-spirited and small-minded, and it left a searing 
impression," Rove said, referring to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mehlman echoed Rove on national security and taxes and explicitly 
addressed the corruption issue. Republicans and Democrats have offered 
competing plans to tighten the rules regulating the interaction between 
lawmakers and lobbyists, but, as the majority party, Republicans stand 
to lose more if there is widespread public revulsion over the scandal.

Calling for the vigorous prosecution of any wrongdoing, Mehlman sought 
to insulate his party from the spreading scandal involving lobbyist Jack 
Abramoff, the indictment of former House majority leader Tom DeLay 
(R-Tex.) and the guilty plea of former representative Randy "Duke" 
Cunningham (R-Calif.). "If Republicans are guilty of illegal or 
inappropriate behavior," Mehlman said, "then they should pay the price 
and they should suffer the consequences."

Rove referred only indirectly to the corruption issue, warning 
Republicans against becoming complacent in power. "The GOP's progress 
during the last four decades is a stunning political achievement," he 
said. "But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant 
party -- in this case the Democrat Party -- when its thinking becomes 
ossified, when its energy begins to drain, when an entitlement mentality 
takes over, and when political power becomes an end in itself rather 
than a means to achieve the common good."

Democrats were quick to respond, with Democratic National Committee 
Chairman Howard Dean challenging Rove's fitness to serve. "Karl Rove 
only has a White House job and a security clearance because President 
Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in 
revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative," Dean said in a 
statement. Dean added: "The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national 
security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong."

It was four years ago this week when Rove, appearing at another meeting 
of the RNC, said Republicans would make terrorism a central issue of the 
2002 midterm elections. Rove's remarks infuriated Democrats, who 
protested that, until then, Bush had stressed bipartisanship and 
national unity in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Republicans made historic gains in 2002, and Bush successfully used the 
issue again to help secure his reelection in 2004, despite growing 
public dissatisfaction with the administration's handling of the war in 
Iraq. Yesterday's speeches by Rove and Mehlman signaled that the White 
House and the RNC intend to pursue much the same strategy in a 
midterm-election year that begins with Republicans on the defensive.

Mehlman and Rove accused the Democrats of trying to weaken the USA 
Patriot Act and of embracing calls for a premature exit from Iraq. They 
defended Bush's use of warrantless eavesdropping to gather intelligence 
about possible terrorist plots. "Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really 
think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks 
on America, they need to hang up when those terrorists dial their 
sleeper cells in the United States?" Mehlman asked. Pelosi (D-Calif.) is 
the House minority leader.

Before completing their meeting, the Republicans rebuffed efforts to 
pass a resolution on immigration that would have put the national 
committee at odds with the president over the issue of a guest-worker 
program. Instead, the RNC approved a resolution supporting Bush's position.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001853.html?referrer=email
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