There are six weeks to go now, and as we enter the home stretch of this election year, I think it’s crucial for all of us to remember something. Liberals tend to ascribe to conservatives the quality of an evil-genius. It plays into a lot of stereotypes. In one of my all-time favorite Simpsons episodes, the head of the Springfield Republican Committee was, of course, Mr. Burns. Dracula was also a member.
In real life, Karl Rove probably has a lot to do with this posture. The media elevated him to genius stature quite early on in George W. Bush’s campaign. In fact, Rove was wrong about a lot of stuff. His candidate didn’t win the popular vote, lucked out in Florida because a bunch of Jewish voters in Palm Beach County accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan, and ended up being “elected” by an unprincipled Supreme Court. Later, the Republican realignment that Rove confidently predicted never materialized, instead crashing hard on the rocks of a dishonest and costly war and a deregulatory scheme that nearly destroyed the world economy. But the media, forever on the hunt for a Great Man of History, venerated him, and as a result he got in liberals’ heads.