GOOD FOR KARL ROVE!

(I may never use that sentence again)

Rove correctly said that the Baggers were rubes and that upset Fats Limbaugh who started taking shots at Rove.  The Raw Story reports that on CBS's Face the Nation, Rove pushed back against Fats but it wasn't clear from the transcript Raw Story provided.  Here's the relevant part of the FTN interview:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk about the Tea Party a little bit. Rush Limbaugh said you feel threatened by the Tea Party because you and the-- the other establishment folks didn’t have anything to do with forming it.

KARL ROVE: No, no. I-- I welcome it. I think it’s one of the most positive and wholesome developments. What he took out of context was a comment I made in an interview with a bunch of hostile German reporters in which I said, “The Tea Party is not sophisticated.” And then yet, in my definition of the word sophisticated, I was using the one about pretentiously or superficially wise. These are not people who are skilled in the ways of Washington. They don’t want to be. They’re ordinary Americans from Main Street America who have created a massive grassroots effort driven by a sentiment in this country. Even more important than the groups is the sentiment that’s driving it, that the government is on a terribly dangerous course of spending too much money, running up too much deficit and taking up too much of our-- too much control of our lives with things like Obamacare. And I consider it to be wholesome, patriotic, and incredibly positive for the country. It’s going to drive turn up at this election. Four years ago, eighty two million people voted in races for the U.S. House of Representatives. I would not be surprised to see it be eighty-five or eighty-six. I wouldn’t-- I wouldn’t drop over if it got to ninety million. And a large amount of that new participation in this year’s election is being driven by a vast army of local grassroots organizations, organized around a kitchen table, organized in a community center, organized over a-- in a coffee shop of people who want to do something to save America.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I-- I want to get back to that but I must ask you about something you just said. Are you saying, have you come on FACE THE NATION this morning and said for therecord that Rush Limbaugh takes things out of context?

KARL ROVE: Well, in this instance, he-- he didn’t-- he may have commented before he saw the entire interview. Look, he’s a friend of mine. And he is more-- he is almost more than anybody else is responsible for helping encourage people to educate themselves about the-- the impact of the spending, the deficit and Obamacare so that they have become politically active. He has a vast audience and that audience and-- and others have talked to that audience as well. And people have come to-- think about it. The President of the United States has the biggest bully pulpit in the country. He’s got vast majorities in the Senate and the House. And yet, the health care bill goes from being a-- as a general concept favored by American people in the early part of 2009, by two to one to when the bill actually passed--forty-four percent of the Americans favored it, forty-seven disapproved of it. And today, if you take a look at the average of the polls over the last several months, it’s an average of forty percent of the American people favor the bill and nearly fifty percent today don’t favor. It’s the only piece of major social legislation that I’ve seen in modern times that became less popular after it was passed.