Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Why was Karl Rove so confident?

As of this writing the Democrats look to have about a 15 seat majority in the House and possibly control of the Senate depending on recounts and legal challenges in Montana and Virginia and whether Joe Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats or the Republicans. (Joe Lieberman’s party affiliation reminds me of Abraham Lincoln asking how many legs a dog has if you call the tail a leg. Answer: 4 – calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.)

These results make me wonder what happened to Karl Rove’s October surprise and why he was so supremely confident up to the end. Did he think that his dirty trick of harassing swing voters with robo-callers which deceptively appeared to be from Democrats would cause a last minute swing? Did he just assume that the Republicans would have a superior Get Out the Vote drive? Was Karl unaware that the powers that be in business (such as in the media and possibly the electronic voting machine companies) who had aided his efforts in previous elections had decided that the current situation in the country was bad for business and needed to change? Or did he really know what was going to happen and was just putting on a show of confidence?

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