Rove On Rush

KARL ROVE was on the Rush Limbaugh Program today for about 15 minutes, and spoke about what it was like to be in the White House, and work for President Bush.

Then Rush Limbaugh asked Rove what he would “like people to know about the president that they don’t know.” Rove replied:

Look, the thing the American people need to know about him is he is just as passionate today about doing his job of protecting America and of growing the economy and being focused on big reforms that will make America better and safer and stronger in the years ahead, as he was in the day that he came in, and he walks into that office and lights up that building with — you know, it sounds corny, but it’s inspiring to work around him. He’s got a wonderful spirit. He’s got a great sense of humor. He treats people with the greatest respect and dignity, and that goes from the guy swabbing out the floors on the first floor of the White House to, you know, some foreign head of state. He treats everybody with respect and dignity, and he sets such a wonderful tone and serves as a wonderful model for people who work around him.

That is something to think about.

But the big takeaway of the interview is the things the Rove had to say about Hillary Clinton. He was so direct and so prepared that you might think he was conducting a campaign briefing for the Republican candidates for 2008.

He said that, even though it is very difficult to win three presidential elections in a row, Hillary Clinton faces a huge hurdle:

There is no front-runner who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has in the history of modern polling.

Then he went into some of the negatives on Hillary. On domestic policy:

Senator Clinton voted against the prescription drug benefit for seniors. Senator Clinton voted against allowing people to save tax-free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses. Senator Clinton opposes giving every American a standard health deduction so that they can deduct from the cost of their income taxes, their insurance premiums... Yet Senator Clinton, who deems to lecture this president on health care, opposed allowing people to do either save tax-free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses, or, she also opposed — she also opposes — allowing there to be a tax deduction for people to take off their income tax costs of their insurance premiums. She’s against having a level playing field so that the guy who has to pay for health care for his family or her family out of their own pocket, gets the same tax break the big corporations get for providing health insurance to their employees. She’s against allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines like we routinely buy auto insurance today so you can shop for the cheapest price and the best product for your family’s needs.

Then on foreign policy:

You know, this is a woman who has been less than supportive of the policies that those men and women who are in the frontlines of the global war on terror fighting. This is like a woman who has opposed the Patriot Act that gave us the tools to defend the homeland. This is a woman who opposes the terrorist surveillance program that allowed us to listen in on the conversations of bad people who are calling into the United States. She opposed the FISA reforms that would allow us to listen into communications and see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists, even outside the country whose messages simply happened to flow through US telecom networks.

What are the odds that a lot of people are going to be parsing these remarks of Rove very carefully over the next few days?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.