Looking back at the age of Rove

Jonah Goldberg reflects on the departure of Karl Rove:

The lesson here is particularly acute for conservatives. Rove engineered Bush’s victory in 2000 by promising a different kind of Republican, a.k.a. a “compassionate conservative.” That meant generally staying mute on racial issues, luring Latinos into the GOP fold by any means necessary and advocating federal activism on everything from single motherhood to education. The story is complex, of course. Bush won tax cuts and was stronger on defense than Gore or Kerry would have been. But the central point remains: Rove’s strategic vision involved securing a Republican victory at the expense of conservative principles.

Partisan victories are nice, but they aren’t an end in themselves. Harry Truman, whom Rove and others see as role models for Bush, himself liked to quote Napoleon on his fateful encounter with the Russians: “I beat them in every battle, but it does not get me anywhere.”

Compassionate conservatism succeeded as a political tactic by coopting liberal assumptions in much the same way that Bill Clinton’s triangulation stole conservative thunder. Rove was, famously, the architect of this strategy, and as such the left hated him not for his ideas but for his successes, which they now want to emulate at all costs. The net-root “fighting Dems” who care about partisan victory above all else are in many respects the children of Karl Rove.

“What is history,” Napoleon asked, “but a fable agreed upon?” After he pens his memoirs from his Texan Elba, maybe we’ll find out what fable Rove subscribes to: the one in which he was a champion for conservatism, or the one in which he liberated the GOP from conservatism.

Rove does leave a mixed legacy and it's nice to see an evaluation which is neither a moonbat screed nor a Republican hagiography.

What needs to be remembered is that George W Bush was the candidate and then the president. The final decision was always his. Whatever was done, good or bad, was in the end done by Bush. And whatever ultimate credit or blame there is to assign belongs to Bush.