Reply #18: Rove has spoken openly for several years about this being his goal.

[snippy]

He has given several interviews which covered this. His strategy of governing based on politics and polls rather than policy is just the latest part of a far reaching strategy developed and implemented by the republican party over a long period of time to become the dominant political party in the US for several generations.

The first element of this strategy was to recruit and train, with nationally solicited funds, republican candidates for local elections with the idea that these candidates would later run for the state legislature and then Congress. This was the original purpose of GOPAC.

But GOPAC evolved from just a recruitment and training organization to a propaganda machine. The purpose of the propaganda was to make sure that the republican party defined the democratic party in the minds of as many voters as possible. That became a second element of the republican strategy. In the last 10 years or so democratic candidates and the democratic party have allowed that to occur.

Since Newt Gingrich took over GOPAC, the republican strategy has included trying to marginalize the democratic party by painting it as extremist in its liberalism. This is why a republican candidate for any office higher than dogcatcher is trained to use the famous GOPAC words when referring to a democratic opponent or the democratic party. It is also why the republican party spends millions of dollars every year and employs hundreds of people solely to make the democratic party appear too liberal for most independent voters. This is part of the reason, if not the reason, that the word "liberal" has acquired a negative connotation in so many voters' minds.

Another element to the republican strategy was to focus on redistricting. The RNC spent tens of millions of dollars on state legislature elections in the late 1990's and especially the 2000 election. According to the RNC, the reason this was done was so that republicans would control more of the redistricting done after the 2000 census. Although the obvious goal of redistricting was to create more republican districts, another element of this strategy came to light just after the recent Texas redistricting.

The Texas redistricting continued implementing the republican strategy of defining the democratic party as too liberal. In effect it combined the redistricting strategy with the definition strategy. The redistricting did not seek to eliminate the most liberal democrats in the Texas Congressional delegation. Rather it sought to eliminate the more conservative to moderate democrats and guarantee the re-election of the most liberal democrats. This is part of a strategy described by Tom DeLay to make the democratic party the party of blacks, feminists, homosexuals, and extremist environmental groups like ELF. This redistricting strategy will be followed in other states whenever the republicans get the opportunity, even if that does not occur until after the 2010 census.

Rove's contribution of the most recent part of the republican strategy involves using polls to identify issues that Bush should focus on. Rove places particular importance on issues that appeal to younger voters. Hence the priority of changing the Social Security program now even though Medicare and Medicaid present much more serious and immediate financial problems for the country. This emphasis on younger voters is intended to create republican voters in elections over the next two decades.

Rove's strategy of governing based on politics and polls rather than policy also has been extended to the various departments and agencies in the federal government. During the last four years either Rove or one of his deputies has briefed nearly every department and agency on poll results concerning an issue requiring a decision by the department or agency. The most recent example of this concerns the FDA's waffling over its decision on whether to make the "morning after pill" available over the counter.

The republican strategy to become the dominant party has been well thought out and developed, and well implemented over a period of years. It has been depressingly effective in my opinion. It irritates me that the democratic party apparently has had no strategy to counter it.