Karl Rove to Resign

(Photo via Chicago Tribune)

The architect calls it quits.

Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush's two national campaigns and his most prominent adviser through 6-1/2 tumultuous years in the White House, announced today that he will resign at the end of the month, and associates said he plans to leave politics behind, for now at least.

Kevin Drum:

It doesn't really matter. History will judge Rove a colossal failure, a man who never understood how to govern and, for all his immense knowledge of polls and politics, never really understood the times he lived in. It was 9/11 that both made and broke the Bush presidency, not some kind of mystical McKinley-esque realignment. Rove was blind to that, and blind to the way Bush should have governed after 9/11. His one-track mind, in which every problem is solved by wielding the biggest, nastiest partisan club you can lift, just couldn't adapt. It's fitting that he insisted on making even his final act as calculatedly partisan as he could, announcing his resignation not through the White House press office, but in an interview with the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Sic transit, Karl.

Karl Rove was more clever and shameless than a genius while many of this political opponents were inept or feeble. In 2002, a partisan court gifted this candidate the Presidency and in 2002 he used 9/11 and the Iraq war to club a weak-kneed Democratic Party to defeat. During the 2004 Presidential election, Karl Rove used shameless methods in smearing a war hero. Behind the scenes Karl Rove tired to turn the whole Government into an arm of the Republican Party, as an example the Justice Department scandals.

For Karl Rove it was never about furthering Conservative principles rather it was getting Bush elected and winning some Congressional seats. Secondary, was cementing the GOP as the majority party for years to come. Karl Rove achieved this first goal, but he failed in this second.