November 3, 2006

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

eveningsout

A profile of Bush's master manipulator

by Anthony Glassman

The mid-term elections are just days away, and the Republican Party is being pilloried for a string of scandals, from Abramoff to Foley, from the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the revelation of secret CIA prisons overseas.

It's a stark change from the elections two and six years ago, when George W. Bush was twice elected president and the Democrats were on the ropes, with control of neither house of Congress.

Karl Rove, the man who orchestrated Republican successes in both of those earlier elections, cannot manipulate the facts to hide the Republican Party's black eyes as he did to emasculate Democratic supporters like trade unions or trial lawyers, and he's run out of places to push samesex marriage bans to bring in support from African Americans and Latinos.

THE

Rove, apparently, is a little duplicitous when it comes to gay folks, as is much of the Republican hierarchy.

Slater and Moore examine much of that issue, including LGBT staffers in the offices of prominent Republicans, Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman's alleged homosexuality (on which he dodged a direct question from Gay People's Chronicle reporter Eric Resnick, who they interviewed for the book), and Rove's stepfather, the man who raised him, who was himself gay.

ARCHITECT

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THE MASTER PLAN FOR ABSOLUTE POWER

JAMES MOOVE AND WAYBE SEATER

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Yes, his carefully constructed house of cards seems to be falling apart.

How he built that edifice makes an incredibly compelling story, one that James Moore and Wayne Slater began in their book Bush's Brain and now continue in the follow-up, The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power (Crown, $25.95, hardcover).

The Architect tends to bounce between issues that Rove attacked: trial lawyers and medical malpractice suits, unions, samesex marriage. But Moore and Slater should be commended for the intense scrutiny they give Rove's machinations on LGBT Ameri-

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victions.

Perhaps the most damning information for Rove's power, reflected in the current tension between social and fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party's power base, is the fact that Rove himself is at best an agnostic, at worst an atheist. While pandering to evangelical Christians, Rove himself has no such con-

It is, perhaps, one of the most literal examples of someone selling their soul for power in contemporary history.

Rove had plans to bring Republicans to power nationally and keep them there, decimating the Democratic Party and leaving it foundering without its historic supporters, turning their strengths (support for LGBT people, unions, and the like) into weaknesses to be cynically exploited by his machine.

While this book may not change anyone's mind as they head into the voting booth, it should give Republicans pause. The ends justifying the means embroils a lot of other-

wise good people in some truly reprehensible, or at the least dishonest, activity.

For Democrats, it's a thick tome of "I told you so!" Rove is a brilliant man, but he's far from being a nice man, at least professionally.

One of the most interesting things. about the book is the dichotomy presented by delving into Rove's workings: The authors want to dislike him, but much like Darth Vader or Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Moriarty, when someone is that good at being bad, you just can't stop from having a grudging admiration, if not actually being darned impressed by their manipulations.

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