Congratulations to Karl Rove for joining the “reality based
community,” which comprises you and me and other lesser mortals who look to
empirical reality when analyzing and acting in the world.
Remember it was Rove who, when referring to the war in Iraq,
supposedly said that some people were “in what we call the reality based
community” and “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality…That's not the way the world really works anymore. 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.”
It was Rove, too, who exploded in rage when Fox News
declared Obama the winner in Ohio and therefore of the 2012 presidential
election. An Obama win went so much against the alternative reality that Rove
and other Republicans had constructed that he went into a hissy fit of denial.
Now Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal that it was probably unwise of Congressional Republicans to
start this current fight over the debt ceiling and federal budget. In the Great
Karl’s words, “In general, it's not wise to engage in a battle without having an
endgame.”
Entering a battle without an endgame is something about
which Karl Rove should know quite a lot. Rove was part of the neo-con
faith-based if-wishing-made-it-so brain trust that planned and implemented the
Iraq War without considering what would happen after the invasion. They went to
war without an end game. We all know how that worked out.
I’m sure all my readers’ hearts are as warmed as mine to
learn that Rove has dropped his objection to reality and has decided that maybe
it is better to think first and shoot later.
Rove does remain part of the conservative propaganda machine
that is trying to sell us on the nonsense that the country blames the President
and Democrats as much as they do the Republicans for the government shutdown
and imminent default. The latest polls of course contradict that colored view,
with 22% more of Americans blaming Republicans than blaming Obama and the
Democrats.
The Republican media apparatchiks, including Rove, are also
trying to convince us that the Democrats are more to blame for the mess,
because they have refused to enter serious discussions about deficit
reductions. Also not a part of reality:
As President Obama recently pointed out, House Republicans turned down 19
requests to enter into joint discussions with the Senate. I am not the first to
speculate that the House Republicans were probably too busy to meet on the
budget because they were taking more than 40 votes to turn back the Affordable
Care Act.
What the Tea-Party Republicans really object to is that
President Obama, Democrats, many of their fellow Republicans and most of the
country see the world as it is and not the world that these right wingers want
to bring into existence by denying reality, the Democratic process, and, most
tragically, the needs of millions of innocent middle class and poor people
across the country.
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