Friday, December 3, 2004

Archive: Karl Rove, super-genius

November 5, 2004

It is the take of many observers that Karl Rove orchestrated the 11 state level anti-gay initiatives for the explicit purpose of bringing his 4 million fundamentalists to the ballot box (as opposed to it being a happy accident which he certainly recognized and encouraged where he could). I'm doubtful. When everyone's interests lie in the same direction anyway, you don't need a conspiracy.

In any case, I'm not so convinced that Rove is a genius--at least in the current sense of being intellectually brilliant. I think he's a genius, if at all, mainly in the old sense of the word--a one-of-a-kind--in this case, someone whose ideas might occur to others as well, but who is uniquely lacking in a conscience, and therefore willing and able to go ahead with those ideas when others would be daunted by the harmful consequences.

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