Saying Goodbye to Rove

By Will Durst, AlterNet. Posted August 24, 2007.

Karl Rove, Bush's brain, quit last week. And no, he hasn't been replaced, so yes, you could say the cavity remains empty. To put it another way: Voldemort has left the building. Darth Vader took off his helmet. Proof positive that Satan had more than just a passing acquaintance with the Pillsbury Doughboy has exited stage right. This sudden shift of malodorous winds has caused liberals to shiver in separation anxiety knowing they're going to have to look elsewhere to assuage their demon jones, as they no longer have the pale, pudgy strategist as target for their limp verbal projectiles.

Mr. Rove made his teary announcement at a joint press conference held on the South Lawn of the White House alongside the tenant whom he thrust into residency of that property with all the elegance and subtlety of an armor plated freight train run off its tracks into a Third World flea market. The 43rd President of the United States visibly choked up saying "so long" to the man he affectionately called "Turd Blossom," as his alter ego was pried away from him for the first time in 14 years.

Rove scoffed at reporters' questions about future subpoenas in the federal prosecutor firings investigation leading to his abrupt retirement, referring to the inquiry as "pure politics." And coming from the high grand master of pure politics, this should be considered the ultimate compliment. Then the man with the power to cloud men's minds shuffled off to Nowheresville City in what he labeled a desire to spend more time lying to his family.

But the furniture in his White House office had yet to be decontaminated when his family apparently grew tired of his company kicking him out to spend the bulk of his new free time on various television news shows tossing fistfuls of scathing barbs at potential Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he described as "fatally flawed" but meant "colder than a witch's catcher's mitt hidden under a crate of four pound rump roasts in the rear of a walk-in freezer."

These mouthy jousts have caused more consternation in Democratic ranks than a turkey vulture circling at dawn during the annual Galapagos Island turtle hatchling race to the sea. Hillary's people are trumpeting Rove's blasts as kind of a Bad Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval. You hate him. He hates her. Ergo, she's your girl. While Barack Obama's people maintain that by attacking Hillary, Rove is attempting to rally Democratic voters to the more vulnerable candidate. The reasoning goes that Republicans are really scared of Barack and are attempting to scuttle his candidacy by attacking her opponent, because they realize these assaults will be construed as an endorsement. It's all so Machiavellian, its probably true. Although I have no idea what I just said.

If it does work, this could be the next big thing in political campaign strategy. Hiring public pariahs to pretend to support your enemy is so 2007. No more shots of a drunken Lindsay Lohan wearing an "I'm With Fred" t-shirt -- obviously a ploy by either the Giuliani or Romney camp. The next tactic will mutate into a double-triple switch where you hire someone really vile to attack yourself and then reveal that the attack was a cooperative effort between your opponent and his even eviler puppet master and there's a sex tape of the two which gets shown on YouTube. I'm still working out the details, but you get the drift. Practice on your friends. If Karl Rove has anything to say about it, the Republicans will.

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Will Durst is a comic, writer, actor, former radio talk show host and door to door soap salesman. Catch Durst performing his solo show "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing" in Off Broadway at the New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) which has been extended through the end of September. At least. Telecharge.com for tickets.

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