Thumpin' How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution

1 AN IMMOVABLE OBJECT Five hundred conservatives applauded excitedly as Karl Rove rose to speak in an elegant ballroom at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers on the evening of June 22, 2005. This was a heady time for the activists who had gathered to honor Rove and give him an award that had previously been bestowed on such stars as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. President Bush had been reelected five months earlier by a margin of 3.5 million votes, despite fierce campaigning by grassroots Democrats and millions of dollars poured into the race by liberal donors. Republicans and conservatives viewed Bush's victory over John Kerry as nothing less than an emphatic affirmation of Americans' support for their principles. Bush himself said at a press conference two days after the election, "I've got the will of the people at my back." The Republican victory in fact owed a good deal to superior political tactics, and Bush and his party were still benefiting from the emotions surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks, but those factors were downplayed in the post-election euphoria. "I earned capital on the campaignpolitical capital," Bush said. "And now I intend to spend it." It wasn't just Bush's victory that lent credence to the notion that America was becoming more Republican in a fundamental way. In the Senate, Republicans swept six open seats in the South and increased their majority to 5545. For some conservatives, the sweetest part of that outcome was the defeat of Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a frequent Bush critic. Republicans had fared well in the House also, increasing their majority by three, to 232203. Never had the party's future seemed more assured. That was the landscape as members of the Conservative Party of New York gathered to hear Rove's speech at the Sheraton. Founded in 1962 in the belief that even the Republican Party was too liberal, the Conservative Party had become an important political force in the state. The audience could not have been more friendly to Rove, widely praised as the architect of Republican victories in 2000, 2002, and 2004. "It was fantastic," Shaun Marie Levine, the Conservative Party's executive director, said of the celebratory atmosphere that night. "When a gentleman gets up and says what you believe, it's refreshing and wonderful to know he is right up there with the leader of the free world...People went wild." The pudgy, bespectacled, buzzcut Rove was to make news that night with the sort of cutting comment that had become his trademark. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," Rove said. "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." In the following days, Democrats angrily demanded that Rove retract his statement that liberals wanted to offer terrorists "therapy." It was a reflection of the political moment that Rove shrugged off their demands without consequence, while the White House stood by his comments. But by far the greater significance of Rove's speech was the vision he outlined of an imminent era of conservative Republican dominance. Rove was a student of history; his White House office featured two pictures of Abraham Lincoln, a Lincoln campaign banner, letters from James Madison, and a Theodore Roosevelt campaign ribbon. The first book Rove had ever read, in second grade, wasGreat Moments in History, and he kept a framed copy of its first page. The strategist was fascinated by the presidency of William McKinley, who had ushered in a Republican era at the beginningBendavid, Naftali is the author of 'Thumpin' How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385523288 and ISBN 0385523289.