Wehner on Rove

Democrat spinmeisters and liberal journalists are all over the tube today explaining that Karl Rove's legacy was extreme partisanship. In liberal myth Rove initiated the "51% principle" that held that in a divided electorate it was useless to try to build up a large majority by attracting moderates and independents. Instead you should try only for a tiny working majority. The formula for winning that narrow majority supposedly was to divide the country, fire up your base with extreme rhetoric, and ignore the moderates.

This, of course, is nonsense on stilts. As I have pointed out time and again Bush has been a uniter, not a divider, consistently reaching across the aisle to secure important legislation, on taxes, on health care, on education, on foreign affairs. He has been so non-partisan that he has earned the enmity of the Republican "base." It is the Democrats who have behaved despicably to divide the nation in wartime. Now Peter Wehner chimes in. Pointing to Bush's historic win in 2004, a win largely engineered by Rove, he writes:

Not only did the President win, he increased his support among women, Hispanics, Jewish voters, Catholics, African Americans, Asian Americans, union households, suburban voters, moderates, independents, big city residents, and small city residents (so much for the myth of the "base-only" strategy).

Read the whole thing here.

Indeed!