Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 05:54 pm
Here’s a shocker for you. A lawyer has called Karl Rove “delusional” and “lying” in his response to questions filed about his PAC with the FEC.
Now, if you get dizzy around cyclones of deceit, buckle up for this one, because it’s Karl and it’s a shill game moving at high rate of speed and it took place on Fox News. Phew.
Watch Rachel Maddow’s take on Rove’s dark money here courtesy of MSNBC:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Of the few campaign finance laws that still exist, there is one which states that if you are advocating for or against a specific candidate, you must disclose your dark money.
Karl Rove has a PAC — “Crossroads GPS” aka “American Crossroads” — that frequently advocates for or against specific candidates but keeps its money trail secret, claiming it to be (barf bag at the ready) an “educational group” for “social welfare”. An Obama campaign lawyer named Bob Bauer wrote to the FEC to demand that Crossroads disclose its donors since it is plainly a “political committee” and hence subject to federal reporting requirements.
The New York Times reported:
In the complaint, obtained by The New York Times, Robert F. Bauer, the campaign’s chief counsel, writes that the group — founded by Karl Rove, among others — can no longer shield the identity of its donors by defining itself as a “social welfare” organization.
“Crossroads seems to believe that it can run out the clock and spend massive sums of money in this election without accounting for a trace of its funding,” Mr. Bauer wrote in the complaint, filed Tuesday. “Now, a federal appellate court has issued a ruling that makes clear that Crossroads is out of time.”
The case Mr. Bauer cites is “Real Truth About Obama v. FEC,” in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the government must determine the “major purpose” of groups like Crossroads.
Rove sought refugee status on Fox News, where he claimed that he was being targeted by “thuggish” behavior (that’s Fox for “black” or “union”, depending on the story) and his donors were being intimidated. He then commenced an ad hominem attack against the Obama lawyer with a personal story that is both untrue and unrelated to the central question regarding Rove’s dark, secret PAC money.
His story involved a sex scandal, of course, because shiny ball!
According to Rove, Bauer was the attorney for a female Republican lawyer who alleged that Rove asked her to investigate the sexual shenanigans (aka for Republicans; “God’s favor”) of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, the very successful Democrat in a Republican state. Siegelman was targeted by the Bush DOJ for years until finally they got him thrown in jail. (“52 former state attorneys-general have asked Congress to investigate whether the prosecution of Siegelman was pursued not because of a crime but because of politics.”)
Rove claimed that Bob Bauer was the attorney for the Republican lawyer who claimed Rove had asked her to target Siegelman on 60 Minutes, yada yada; Rove is the hunted by the mean thugs in the Democrat Party, pity, teeny tiny violin, etc. Rove played his Palin, “This is the kind of guy Bob Bauer is, I know what he’s doing.”
Hey, Karl, we know what kind of guy YOU are, and we know what you’re doing.
Eye on the ball, people. Rove said nothing about his PAC, and his response was to tell an untrue story from ten years ago.
Rachel Maddow made the point that Bob Bauer wrote a letter to Rove clarifying that he never in fact represented the woman who went on 60 Minutes, and furthermore, has never met her, talked to her on the phone, or crossed her path. Bauer then attempted to help Rove find reality by offering up that secret path to information known as search engines, where he promises that Rove can find the real name of the woman’s lawyer if he so chooses. Isn’t that cute? As if Rove cares about reality.
So Rachel takes to the search engine of her choice, finds this lawyer, a woman named Priscilla Black Duncan, and calls her. Duncan says that Bob Bauer was totally unknown “down here” and was not involved in any way. She finished up this spanking by saying “I think Karl’s delusional. I think he’s lying.”
Rachel pointed out that Rove’s non sequitur was designed to help him avoid answering the question about who is donating to his PAC and why he shouldn’t have to disclose their names.
I took you through this because it is basically the entire operation of the Republican Party. This is how they avoid transparency and sunshine; they muddy the waters of freedom and liberty with their fictional version of reality and energize their base via anger over social wedge issues coupled with vague conspiracy theories about their own Jesus-esque persecution at the hands of the “liberal” media.
Karl Rove can’t afford to have the American people talking about real issues. He is the man, after all, alarmingly known as “Bush’s brain” who brought us the financially disastrous “big government conservative” George W Bush administration. Bush’s brain is a draft-dodging war hawk, devoid of any domestic policy knowledge, who takes refuge in the phony morality of political Christianity in spite of his two divorces. Rove is sadly your typical modern day Republican.
Republicans know that Karl Rove is a policy deficient thug, and even Bush staffers attempted to warn their fellow Americans:
One senior White House official told me that he’d be summarily fired if it were known we were talking. “But many of us feel it’s our duty — our obligation as Americans — to get the word out that, certainly in domestic policy, there has been almost no meaningful consideration of any real issues. It’s just kids on Big Wheels who talk politics and know nothing. It’s depressing. Domestic Policy Council meetings are a farce. This leaves shoot-from-the-hip political calculations — mostly from Karl’s shop — to triumph by default. No one balances Karl.”
Conservative Republicans have so primed their audience now that all they need to do is tell a tale of persecution and woe, and all reason is immediately abandoned. The American people need to keep their eye on the ball this election season. Don’t be distracted by the shiny tinfoil ball thrown into the middle of the game. The prize is in the actual game ball — the money behind the players.
Karl Rove’s “social welfare” organization “American Crossroads” is most likely violating campaign finance laws. That is the truth that Rove attempted to pity play his way out of, with the sexual shenanigan cherry on top.
In 2007, as Rove left the Bush White House (while fleeing multiple Congressional investigations whose subpoenae he refused to honor), then Senator Barack Obama said, “Karl Rove was an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided, the special interests more powerful and the American people more shut out from their government than any time in memory.” Ah, Senator, welcome to 2012 and Citizens United, also known as Karl Rove’s playground.
Dark, dirty politics will be the name of the game this election cycle, and Rove is the master at it. Rove is known for thuggish party tactics and was especially adroit at painting Democrats as weak on national security. Since President Obama has pulled that rug from under Republicans’ feet, they have no choice but to double down on dirty and plenty of ways to do it post Citizens United.
It’s ironic that Karl Rove, the prime instigator of W’s craven substitution of political calculation for policy discussion derisively referred to as “Mayberry Machiavellis”, throws the word ‘thug’ around. Inept Machiavellian ruler Karl Rove knows how to win elections, but govern he can not. Ron Suskind was shocked by Rove’s “violent imputations” when he overheard Rove screaming into a White House phone, “We will fu*k him. Do you hear me? We will fu*k him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fu*ked him!”
Bonus thug points: Who can forget Rove’s guest hosting of the Rush Limbaugh show? But, shiny ball!
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