Karl Rove, Rove's role in the Romney era, and 24/7 kittens

Craig Unger has an interesting Salon piece about Karl Rove,  his waning grip on this year's presidential election, and why that won't matter in the long run.

Evidence of the waning grip:

• Romney's failure to stay on point (e.g., the 47% comment)
• Clint Eastwood
• An unusual number of references to murder (e.g., the "sink Todd Akin" comment at the RNC, and the quote from the piece that follows)

Rove’s comment about Akin was not the first time this campaign that he linked himself to murder. At the Republican convention in Tampa, in response to a question I asked him at a CSPAN-televised event, Rove falsely asserted that my new book, “Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power,” accused him of being a murderer — an apparent reference to the 2008 death of his computer guru, Mike Connell. Again, the “murder” comment was off point and completely unnecessary.

Let’s get this straight: Out of the blue, this highly disciplined, message-centric Machiavellian strategist has completely unnecessarily associated himself with murder. Twice. What is Karl Rove smoking?

• Akin's refusal to withdraw despite Rove pulling all money from the Missouri race

And why this doesn't matter:

Rove is playing the long game, Unger writes. If the Romney campaign continues to flounder, Rove can (and indeed has already begun to) divert super PAC funds from the presidential campaign to key Senate races around this country. Of course, this won't be without consequence — the establishment can't ignore the presidential race without having some negative effects on congressional races. Plus, the voter ID laws he's been promoting for a decade stand to affect more than 5 million voters (read: Democrats) in more than 23 states in November. 

And... what this means:

"Meanwhile, whatever the outcome of the election, Karl Rove is playing the long game. He’s vying for complete control of the party. He still has his hands on the super PAC purse strings — and that money means he runs the Republican Party. Even if Romney loses, he will still be in control. It’s just that he may be thinking about 2016 a bit earlier than he had planned."

Read the full story on Salon. Then, after you've seen enough of Rove, check out the Washington Animal Rescue League's 24/7 live streaming kitten cam. There are kittens. They are hanging out in a little cardboard Capitol. Sometimes they play, sometimes they sleep, sometimes they walk up to the camera and lick their crotches.

Lots of Republicans now supporting Akin

Following up on yesterday's post about whether the Republicans would support Todd Akin in the race for Missouri Senate:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has issued a statement saying it is no longer ruling out the prospect of spending money on Akin's campaign. Today's statement comes in opposition to Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus' comment last month that the RNC was cutting off its support for Akin on the heels of the "legitimate rape" comment. CNN quoted Priebus on Aug. 20:

"We're not going to send any money toward that race or spend money on the ground in that particular race. We're obviously going to work very hard for a nominee in Missouri up and down the ticket, congressional seats. But I've already called off the phone banks and all of the volunteers for Congressman Akin's race there."
–Priebus on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."

Three days ago (two days before the withdrawal deadline), Priebus made a similar comment on ABC:

"We're not going to play in Missouri with Todd Akin, I can tell you that. So it'll be yet to be seen whether he stays in or not."
–Priebus on ABC's "This Week."

Today, the NRSC issued a statement saying the following (from the Washington Post):

“There is no question that for Missourians who believe we need to stop the reckless Washington spending, rein-in the role of government in people’s lives, and finally focus on growing jobs in this country, that Todd Akin is a far more preferable candidate than liberal Sen. Claire McCaskill,” NRSC executive director Rob Jesmer said. “As with every Republican Senate candidate, we hope Todd Akin wins in November, and we will continue to monitor this race closely in the days ahead.”

Rick Santorum and Jim DeMint also announced their support for Akin today – The Note has their joint statement here. The following have thrown their support behind Akin after initially calling for him to drop out of the race (from ThinkProgress):

• Roy Blunt issued a statement yesterday saying "I’ll be working for the Republican ticket in Missouri, and that includes Todd Akin." This comes less than a month after he told MSNBC "Todd needs to get out of this race."
• The Missouri Republican Party issued a statement saying it stands behind Akin. This comes less than a month after State Party Chairman David Cole sent a memo saying Akin's comments "are not just a distraction—they pose a threat to our party's retaking control of the US Senate and impact other races here in Missouri."

I'm back! (probably... maybe)

Now that I've finished with school and have a bit more free time, I am going to try to start updating this thing again. I've made a few changes, including linking my Twitter feed (which will also be more active now... probably... maybe) in the right panel. Also, in an effort to embrace fancy 2004ish technology, I am also now adding tags to posts. If I get really inspired, I may move this over to Wordpress, but I won't get too ahead of myself after the first post in three years.

So not much content today, except directing you to a couple of stories I already tweeted about:

William Saletan on Todd Akin (Slate)
After Todd Akin refused to pull out of the Missouri Senate race for today's deadline, Saletan compares the GOP's situation today to a situation in 1991 when former Newt Gingrich said KKK member David Duke, who was running for the GOP nomination for president, "is despicable and should be shunned in American politics." With Akin's "legitimate rape" comment, Gingrich strikes a different tone.

Saletan:
This doesn’t seem to trouble Gingrich. "I can't imagine,” he exclaims in disbelief, that the Republican National Committee “would want to risk losing Missouri for Romney by getting into some kind of divisive schismatic fight." Race is a red line, but rape is just a schism.

Lyle Denniston on one person, one vote decision (SCOTUSblog)
In an unsigned ruling, the Supreme Court today that "zero variance" in population is not necessary in drawing congressional districts.

Denniston:
Just because computers can produce almost exactly equal-sized districts, the Constitution does not require it, the decision said.

Come back soon! Or just, you know, subscribe to the RSS feed so you don't have to open it to find out I haven't posted anything new.