'Eight-Gate' and Karl Rove
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, March 12, 2007
When it comes to Republican political shenanigans, Karl Rove is often the most likely suspect.
The political mastermind of the Bush presidency, Rove has exercised a singular amount of control from his West Wing office through his network of loyal operatives inside government and out.
One of his trademarks in the White House has been boldly crossing lines that previous administrations had only dared to blur. For instance, it was Rove who publicly advocated using national security as a wedge campaign issue. And critics charge that it is largely thanks to him that the Bush White House has subordinated domestic policy to politics, focusing less on the common good than on partisan goals such as providing tax cuts for the rich.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the more we learn about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for allegedly political reasons, the more Karl Rove's name seems to come up.
In particular, it looks like some of the prosecutors -- who serve at the pleasure of the president but are nevertheless expected to put the law above politics -- were considered by top administration officials to be have acted with insufficient partisanship before the 2006 election. And one of those officials just might be Rove....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html