With All Due Respect

Karl Rove is an ass. There, I said it. I’m not denying that he is brilliant at what he does and is obviously really intelligent seeing that he knows how to spin any situation to his favor. But really, he’s is just an ass. Why so angry?

Its day two of the Mortgage Brokers Association conference and Rove is doing a panel discussion with former Senator George Mitchell. An unlikely pair for sure. The MBA chairman was moderating a conversation with two guys with topics ranging from the economy to the election. Needless to say, it got nasty. The discussion started off with a bang as protestors once again stormed the stage and unfurled pink banners calling Rove a criminal. The one woman who got on the stage actually grabbed Rove and kept yelling that she was “placing him under citizens arrest “ for crimes committed during his time as Bush’s advisor.
A few more of the Code Pink women came out throughout the event. Again, they yelled out that they were going to arrest Rove which prompted Karl to quip “you and what law enforcement agency”.
It didn’t take long for Karl and George to turn up the heat during the discussion. It was going pretty mellow and then all of the sudden Rove let loose on Mitchell with an angry sounding lecture as a rebuttal to something that the former senator had said. I overheard a woman in the front whisper to her friend “wow, he’s angry”. The two traded jabs over and over again on every topic that was thrown their way. Rove was right on message with attack. It was like watching the last Obama/McCain debate, but Mitchell is no Obama.
Every attack that Rove waged on Mitchell was prefaced by saying “with all due respect…” He must have said it at least a dozen times, just to give you an idea of how many times he was on the attack. This would be the word to drink by if we had been playing one of those drinking game. We would have been sloshed.

One of the best parts of the discussion came when Mitchell mentioned the robocall tactics that Rove and Bush used in the 2000 primaries to level McCain in South. Rove got pissed about this and flat out denied any involvement with that. Since Mitchell hadn’t said what was said in the robocalls, Rove challenged Mitchell to tell the audience what he was referring to. Mitchell wouldn’t jump in the trap. It was like watching FOC News with Sean Hannity and his way of speaking louder than his guest and trying to force them into slipping up by cutting them off and blasting them with repeated questions. I don’t know how they get away with calling that news.

I didn’t expect this conversation to end up like it did. I was actually kind of caught off guard when it started to escalate to that level. I think Rove must have been beaten up and teased a lot as a kid for being such a dorky looking dude.