Rove Offers Republicans A Battle Plan For Elections
"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.'
... 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."
- posted by geoff @ #