The Dead Ender’s Dead Ender

No matter what else happens in this world, it’s oddly reassuring to know that you can always count on Fred Barnes to be the most abject administration lickspittle imaginable. (In its own perverse way, it shows more intergrity than people who acted like him for 5 years and are now deserting the ship because it’s crashed through the bottom of the ocean.) Perhaps my favorite part is, after Barnes has lavishly praised Rove for pulling of the miraculous feat of getting a wartime incumbent a narrow victory over a less-than-compelling opponent by mobilizing the conservative base, he says that “And it was Bush’s dip in popularity, not anything Rove did or didn’t do, that wiped out any White House influence on immigration.” Um, since when is the president’s popularity somehow entirely independent of his chief political consultant? What exactly is Rove’s job? Just kinda sitting there being the “greatest political mind of any generation” while unpopular policy initiative drag down the president’s popularity entirely independent of his influence, I guess…

I do wonder why the greatest political mind in world history thought it was a good idea to expend tons of resources in an expensive, unwinnable state during a razor-thin campaign, though…