Wrong About Rove?

"A new paradigm in yellow journalism: Make a wild assertion on any day, and if ever it come to be true, your reporting is fully affirmed. Anything more egregious than a parking fine on Rove's part, now, will validate the original Truthout story."

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum says someone is headed for a fall:

"I, of course, have no way to judge the truth of either side, although it continues to be strange that Leopold claims to have multiple sources on this story and no other media outlet has even one. In any case, there's damn little wiggle room left here. One side or the other is wrong on a truly spectacular scale and is now set up for an implosion of credibility on a galactic scale."

Talk Left gets a fresh denial from Rove's spokesman, Mark Corallo: "Truthout's claims remain demonstrably false. They are 'utter lies. There is not a shred of truth to them.'"

Jonah Goldberg calls the Truthout statement lame:

"What the hell is that? This strikes me as a new twist on the fake-but-accurate defense, this time using the temporal escape clause. How about something like this:

"On Saturday afternoon, May 20, 2006, National Review ran a story titled, 'New Line of Urine-Powered Hover Cars Comes off Assembly Line.' The story stated in part that such hover cars actually exist and were powered as set forth in the story's title.

"The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. Such hover cars do not yet exist, but we all know it's coming, so it was an understandable case of jumping the gun."

Andrew Sullivan tries to decide whether Rove is brilliant or not so smart:

"My money is on stupid. The right has long sought to portray Karl Rove as a genius; and the paranoid left has been only too happy to go along. My own view is that he's always been a dreadful political strategist. We don't have to wait for a GOP bloodbath this fall to see it. We had a president after 9/11 who could have asked anything of the American public and been supported. He chose a policy of brutal partisan division in war-time, and as commander-in-chief with a strong economy, he turned a 50 percent victory into . . . 51 percent. If he'd risen above petty partisanship, asked for real sacrifice, listened to the military leadership on the war, and included Democrats in a war-cabinet, he could have won in a landslide.

"The domestic policy record is also terrible. By allowing the staggering splurge of spending, especially on the Medicare entitlement, Rove has destroyed the Republicans' advantage on fiscal issues for a generation. By harnessing the GOP to religious fundamentalism, he has all but lost the center and independents; and by relying exclusively on that base, he is also alienating Hispanics on the immigration issue. His decision to ignore Iraq and go for an incoherent social security reform last year was another massive miscalculation. Yes, he can whip up hysteria against already-disliked minorities for short-term gain. But anyone with no scruples or conscience can do that. As for communicating the Bush message: Rove's tenure has been marked by some of the worst p.r. I've yet seen from a White House.

"So, yeah. Rove is a terrible political guru. To sell your soul - and your party's soul - for a permanent majority is one thing. To sell it for 51 percent is just pathetic."