Quick take on Rove

The aptly named Bill Quick, whom I think of as a conservative Libertarian blogger, has an interesting and sensible take on the Plame case.

A lot of the length in the blogs on the right is coming from some desperate spinning that purports to show that while Rove may have told a Time reporter that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, he didn't call her by her name. Sorry, but this is Clinton-level parsing, and it doesn't fly. It is now obvious that Rove is at least one of the government officials who told the press that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent.

Again on the right, much is being made as to whether Rove's information rose to the level of law-breaking. I doubt that it does - that law itself seems fairly nonsensical to me...

...Which, once again, demonstrates the validity of the maxim, "It isn't the crime that gets you hanged, it's the coverup."

Quick goes on to detail what they could have and should have done and he's right. But here's the punch line.

Keep this building fiasco in mind whenever you are tempted to view Karl Rove as an invincible political genius. This is a first class snafu, and Bush and Rove have nobody to blame but themselves.

Indeed. Back then they were arrogantly swaggering around spending that political capital. Didn't take them long to get into deficit spending and as my crazy ex-boyfriend used to say - payback's a bitch.

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