Fighting Back Against Karl Rove

Okay, liberals, progressives and everyone else who believes in government and society that serves all and preserves the individual freedom, be warned. Karl Rove is BACK, ready to save BushCheney’s presidency and Republican butt. His plan is no secret. It’s everything he’s done before: cranking up fear, polarizing the electorate and, most important, mobilizing his base. No doubt about it, the man knows politics and can craft strategies that work, especially when he has the Republican Noise Machine echoing his message across the land. If you still have doubts, check out this article.

What Karl Rove and his clients lack is the ability to govern in the public interest. Republican government in the past six years has given this nation spiraling debt, unending war, loss of America’s prestige, diminished public services and an increasingly uncompetitive economy. Republican government promoted an unconscionable polarization of wealth, a society of vast wealth were fewer and fewer can earn a living wage. Republican government has recreated America in the image of torture and domestic surveillance. I could go on but you already know the story.

That this incredible record of failed performance does not guarantee the perpetual banishment and disgrace its architects so richly deserve is testament to Rove’s evil genius. Democrats, liberals and progressives lost the last three elections to Karl Rove and his band because we believed that we could put forth rational, objective arguments that would convince the American people to reject the Republican cabal. Every time, we’ve come up short. Tantalizingly close–we actually won in 2000 and most likely did in 2004–but at the end of the day, we are the fools and Rove the grinning victor.

The meme in 2006 is that the Democrats are too fragmented and unsure to offer a compelling alternative to Rove’s fear-mongering and cynical patriotism. Witness the recent votes on Iraq in the House and Senate: virtually all Senate Democrats and 42 House Democrats were not willing to call the Republicans political bluff on Iraq. A big part of the problem is that neither Democrats nor the progressive community as a whole march in lockstep. We value debate and discourse and tolerate debate, sometimes sharp debate, that makes us look all over the place. For all their lip service to competition, the Republicans are unwilling allow open debate. And, for all the Democratic “disunity” on Iraq, the biggest difference (except for Joe Lieberman) is on the specific exit not on the idea of exit itself.

That’s why I believe the progressive community needs to focus on broad message. This is hardly my idea; I’ve seen it in a variety of places. So have most of you. In the next four and a half months. I will frame my ideas under three broad contexts: freedom, opportunity and security. (My apologies for not linking to the post where I first read this but I couldn’t locate it.)

Freedom for all to live their lives as they please with out unreasonable interference from government, religion or the righteous.

Opportunity for all to overcome the barriers of race, class, place of birth; the “fair shake” that Mark Warner spoke about at Yearly Kos (although he doesn’t have a monopoly on this idea).

Security from threats, foreign and domestic using American resources and forces in ways that actually protect American interests by working with the rest of the world.

Republicans don’t worry about details. They just shout, “Danger”, “Fear”, “Terror” and launch personal invective against all who oppose them. Amplified through their Noise Machine, they have managed to fool Americans into thinking that Republican government is the only alternative. Offering a more focused alternative that bridges the progressive community’s minimal differences (compared to the gulf that separates us from Republicans) is our opportunity to break their monopoly on political discourse in this country.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.