Bye Bye Rove*

*with apologies to the Everly Brothers

So Karl Rove is leaving the White House to spend more time with his family; his wife and college-aged son! How many college-aged sons are that lucky? Even the people on Fox are openly speculating that ol’ Turdblossom is leaving to get busy on some lucky GOP candidate’s floundering presidential campaign.

MSNBC is pointing out that now that even though Rove is off the payroll, he’s still going to have unfettered access to the Bush-leaguer-in-Chief, but they’re dancing around what seems obvious to me and Fox is already pondering aloud.

I wonder what impact this will have on all the investigations that are circling around Rove. Probably not much. Even should justice eventually prevail in the courts, there’s still the stacked Supreme Court to count on in the end. Or in a worst-case-scenario, the next uncomprehending Republican dolt that Rove guides to the White House.

I’m also wondering if Rove is too tainted by all the ongoing Congressional inquiries and subpoena threats to be openly hired by a leading Republican candidate… it’s interesting that Rove’s resignation at the end of August coincides with Fred Thompson’s promised presidential announcement at the beginning of September.

And even if Rove passes on that, he’ll still be available to guide the eventual nominee behind the scenes, gratis. Remember, this guy is an idealogue by all accounts. His goal really is to imbed a permanent Republican majority in Washington, and he can do that just as well from Texas as from Pennsylvania Ave. “Karl Rove is on the phone? You bet I’ll take that call – cancel my afternoon!”

As for the actual announcement, it was anticlimactic as these scripted events tend to be. There was still a memorable George W Bush moment though.

He demonstrated his famously insensitive touch by opening his brief remarks by – and I am not making this up – lamenting “the Rove family’s sacrifices.” The first words out of his mouth. I swear to god. In a time of war, a war he brought about that has cost thousands of families the lives of their loved ones about which he has expressed no specific empathy, Bush expresses what looks like sincere sympathy for the family of his long-time associate whose suffering has been limited, apparently, to being denied the opportunity to live in historical obscurity in Texas.

God, we should have been so lucky.