Rove and Roberts: Two Peas in the Same Political Pod

It might not seem on its face like Karl Rove and SCOTUS nominee John Roberts have much in common, but there’s one very important attribute they both share—they’re both political hacks. They’ve served their GOP master in different ways, but in the end, neither of them is any more than a political operative who fulfills a certain ideological role within the party. I could tell you all about Roberts’ history with the Republicans, but what difference do specifics make? He’s been a judge for two years, and the rest of his career has been spent in the pockets of GOP power players. This is, in the end, just more of the same from Bush & Co.

And could we really have expected any different? Of course not.

There will no doubt be plenty of debate across the blogosphere over the next few days about whether Rove or Rogers should command our collective attention, but it’s not really an either-or proposition. Whether it’s the Downing Street Memos revealing that the administration was fixing facts and intelligence around the policy, or senior administration officials using their media operatives to discredit a critic (and compromising national security in the process), or an announcement of a GOP hack SCOTUS nominee politically timed to distract from an official investigation of the administration’s misdeeds, it’s all part of the same ugly picture. Our country’s leadership is corrupt. They place ideology before truth, before international law, before national security, before justice. It’s just more of the same.

The GOP with Bush at the helm is interested in one thing and one thing only: holding onto power. And the best way they’ve found to maintain their chokehold on the entirety of our government is to stack every position, stuff every crevice of it, with political hacks. The best thing we can do is keep our eyes on bringing them down—instead of taking the bait to bicker about their decision to do something that should, at this point, be entirely expected.

It’s just more of the same.

And guess what? Behind Roberts, there are 10 more waiting just like him, or worse. More and more and more of the same—until we stop them in their tracks.