Karl Rove and the Tea Party

Right now we have what amounts to three parties representing three political poles. One axis is social going from conservative to liberal. This covers things like gay marriage, the Pledge of Allegiance and the place of religion in society. The other axis is the power of government. Right now the mainstream Republicans and Democrats are at the high end of government power and mainly differ over social values. The Tea Party is somewhere between neutral and conservative on the social axis and has the low end of government power to itself. There used to be a less-government wing of the liberals but it atrophied a long time ago and is not worth mentioning.

The mainstream Republicans and the Tea Party are fighting it out for control of the Republican Party and Karl Rove is in the thick of it. While he sounds reasonable when he says that it is better to run a big-government Republican who can get elected he has a conflict of interest - he is the architect of this split.

Rove's maxim has always been that there is no constituency for small government. On the face of it, this can be argued. Ross Perot won 19% of the 1992 national vote on a platform of fiscal responsibility even though he ran as an independent. Limited-government also attracts some influential single-issue voters like the gun lobby.

Rove means something completely different when he talks about constituency. Whenever government exercises its power, it chooses winners and losers. This means that every issue has deep-pocketed lobbyists.

This is how the Republicans operated during the Bush administration. There was no question of shrinking government. Bush was a supporter of big-government. The question was how the government would be run. Election campaigns often turned on the question of who you trusted to runt he government. That is why Bush handily beat Kerry. Bush came off as a regular guy who you could trust to do the right thing while Kerry came across as clueless.

The hallmark of the Bush administration was a huge increase in domestic spending and an accompanying increase in earmarks.

Rove's strategy for a permanent Republican majority was to appeal to regular voters while filling the campaign coffers with lobbyist cash which was rewarded with earmarks. He somehow assumed that no one would notice how corrupt that system was.

Of course, the Democrats did notice and successfully ran against spending, earmarks, and lobbyists in 2006 and 2008. They failed to deliver on their promised reforms which gave rise to the Tea Party.

All of this is why Rove would rather see a Democrat elected than a Tea Party Republican. If the Tea Party takes over then his vision for the future has been repudiated and his influence is ended.