The Unbelievable Karl Rove

Baker finds that few White House aides "believe Rove will lose his job. Instead, he will turn to figuring out a policy and political agenda that can salvage the last two years of the Bush presidency."

Mike Allen blogs for Time: "'The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected,' Rove tells Time. 'Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass.'

"Exit polls showed heavy discontent with the course of the war, and Bush announced the departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the next day. But Rove took comfort in results of the Connecticut Senate race between the anti-war Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who ran as an independent after losing the Democratic primary over his support for the war. 'Iraq mattered,' Rove says. 'But it was more frustration than it was an explicit call for withdrawal. If this was a get-out-now call for withdrawal, then Lamont would not have been beaten by Lieberman. Iraq does play a role, but not the critical, central role.'"

And here is Rove's extraordinary explanation to Allen of his pre-election predictions:

"[H]e does not believe his data let him down. 'My job is not to be a prognosticator,' he said. 'My job is not to go out there and wring my hands and say, "We're going to lose." I'm looking at the data and seeing if I can figure out, Where can we be? I told the president, "I don't know where this is going to end up. But I see our way clear to Republican control." '"

So the next time Rove predicts a rosy scenario for Republicans -- which he does all the time and which, contrary to his protestations, does appear to be a significant part of his job -- could someone remind him that he has publicly acknowledged that he has no credibility in that arena?

Richard Wolffe writes in Newsweek that even Bush figured out it was going to be a bad night before Rove was ready to admit anything.

Writes Wolffe: "He wasn't just trying to psych out the media and the opposition. He believed his 'metrics' were far superior to plain old polls. . . .

"Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House -- enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists -- to study just how wrong the polls were."

Even Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman implicitly criticized Rove. Wolffe writes that Mehlman "feared that many inside the party were relying too much on technology, like voter databases, and had lost sight of the bigger picture: that voters were turning against them."

Dick Polman blogs for the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Whether President Bush's political guru truly believes his fact-challenged attempts to explain away what happened last Tuesday, or whether he's just spinning out of self-interest (to hang onto his ebbing genius aura, for instance), is almost immaterial. What matters is that the most influential strategist in the Bush White House has publicly chosen to play bad cop to Bush's good cop. Bush is talking magnanimously about reaching across the aisle to the victorious Democrats -- while his political adviser is saying that the Democratic win was no big deal."

And, Polman notes: "In citing the GOP corruption issue, and characterizing it as merely 'all things Washington,' Rove skipped over his own central role. One of the most underreported stories in recent months was the autumn resignation of Rove aide Susan Ralston, who had acted as a frequent messenger between the White House and superlobbyist/convicted felon Jack Abramoff."