Karl Rove Is an Evil Genius

As I type, I’m drowning my sorrows in beer, so if this isn’t my most eloquent post, you’ll forgive me. And besides, you’ll have bigger things to worry about over the next four years than my typos and weak prose.

In any case, my best read of today’s results is that Bush got a big surge from voters showing up to vote against gay marriage — the four million evangelical voters oft-mentioned by Rove. Ignorance. Fear. Hate. Victory. I’m truly disgusted.

I suppose that the good news (in terms of my partisan hat, not my citizen hat) is that Bush himself will be in the chicken coop as his own economic chickens come home to roost. And roost they will.

I also have a substantive recommendation to the Blue states: Do all that you can to shut off the spigots. Completely. Shut it down. All of it. No more sucking on the government’s teat for the Red states. Transform the rhetoric of your Republican brothers into practice: Slash federal spending (is that still a Republican position?). Wipe out the farm subsidies. Eradicate all block grants to the states. End the transfer of thirteen cents out of every Blue State Tax Dollar to the Red states (call it “Real Welfare Reform”.) Replace every dollar of reduced federal spending with a dollar of in-state spending.

Let Illinois, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington, California, and the rest of the Blue States keep their own damn money. Let the Red states keep out the gays, which is apparently their highest priority. Wait ten years and see who comes out ahead. And yes, this is bad policy. But it’s clearly great politics. And winning on the political dimension is, sadly, a necessary condition for winning on the policy dimension.

… Dammit, I’m angry and sad right now. But I’ll take temporary solace in the fact that it’s not quite a done deal yet.

AB