Over at Hotair.com, Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit provide some balance and reason to those conservatives who are savaging Karl Rove, in response to his critical comments on Tuesday night about Christine O’Donnell. Morrissey links to Rove’s appearance on Fox this morning, where Karl rightly reminds people of his support for Tea Party candidates like Sharon Angle, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, and others.
It’s worth recalling that, just a few weeks ago, Rove the Conservative Heretic and Establishment Republican was sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on Rush’s radio program — and several weeks before that he attended Rush’s wedding. In a recent interview with Jonathan Rauch, Rove named Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative as one of his five most important books and testifies to the importance it played in his life. So the notion that Rove has suddenly become an “establishment Republican” and a traitor to the conservative cause simply isn’t plausible. It is, in fact, risible.
Karl has one take on O’Donnell; other people have another interpretation. Rove thinks she hasn’t adequately responded to charges about her finances; others think they are non-issues or unfair attacks. The differences are real enough and they’re worth debating. But to use those differences to go after Rove with hammer and tongs, with fury and venom, doesn’t reflect well at all on those hurling the charges.
Of course, I have an advantage over some of Rove’s harshest critics. I know him and worked with him and for him in the Bush White House. He is a person of deep conservative convictions, a brilliant political and policy mind, and a wonderful human being. He’s also tough as nails, as I saw firsthand when he was the target of Patrick Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation into the Valerie Plame matter (the investigation turned out to be a colossal waste of money and deeply unjust). In circumstances when most other people, including me, would have curled up in a fetal position under their desks, Karl continued to work as if he didn’t have a concern in the world. So he’ll handle this latest dust-up just fine.
Those who have read his book Courage and Consequence — subtitled, it’s worth noting, “My Life as a Conservative in the Fight” (full disclosure: I assisted him with the book) — know Rove is a person who has faced and overcome enormous challenges over the years. He has also devoted his life to the Republican Party and the conservative cause. For some conservatives who disagree with Rove over Christine O’Donnell to now demand an auto-de-fé is terribly unfortunate, unwise, and unmerited.
