HYPOCRITE AND LIAR

Those are my reactions to Karl Rove's latest piece of agit-prop in the Wall Street Journal. The sub-title of his piece - "Why does he routinely ascribe to opponents views they don't espouse?" - justifies the accusation of hypocrisy. Rove made this smear of liberals in 2005:

"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,"

Rove went on to attack Obama:

Even in an ostensibly nonpartisan speech marking Lincoln's 200th birthday, Mr. Obama used a straw-man argument, decrying "a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government -- this constant rejection of any common endeavor -- cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges."

Rove asked "Whose philosophy is this?" and here's the winning reply: GROVER NORQUIST, a major player in conservative politics. Here's what Grover said in 2001:

Mr. NORQUIST: I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.¹

¹May 25, 2001, Friday
POLITICAL ACTIVIST GROVER NORQUIST
ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
REPORTERS: MARA LIASSON
MORNING EDITION (11:00 AM on ET)
LENGTH: 1320 words
BOB EDWARDS, host