Sully on Turd Blossom

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Brilliant:

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power -- which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America's 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war -- and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

Not that I wish good health to the conservative soul, but Andrew's right. Rove won two presidential elections (rather: won one, stole one -- you know what happened) with a malleable child-candidate over weak opponents (yes, that includes Gore) and, the second time, during a time of war and by generating widespread fear through propaganda and lies, but, such electoral success notwithstanding, he has been an abject failure.

Bush and Rove deserved each other -- and history will pummel both of them. The problem is that America, and the world, didn't deserve either one. (America maybe, or much of it, but not the rest of us.)

(Via Digby.)