Mag: Many Republicans no longer interested in Rove's theories

Nick JulianoPublished: Tuesday May 29, 2007
Conservatives are despondent with President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove, accusing them of abandoning the Republican party's principles, as they look toward possible defeat in 2008, according to a new article in The New Yorker.
A former Oklahoma congressman, Mickey Edwards, told the magazine that the Bush administration "has shown itself to be completely incompetent" in expanding its power and mismanaging the war in Iraq.
"This administration is beyond the pale in terms of arrogance and incompetence," Edwards, who left Congress in 1993, told The New Yorker. "This guy thinks he's a monarch, and that's scary as hell."
Newt Gingrich, who is mulling a run for the White House, says the "maniacally dumb" strategy pursued by White House adviser Karl Rove in the last presidential race cost President Bush all of his political capital and has left the Republican party in a shambles, Jeffrey Goldberg reports for the magazine.
Gingrich said President Bush was unable to positively build on his last election victory because Rove was running a campaign that focused primarily on attacking John Kerry, rather than promoting the president's conservative ideology.
"All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote," Gingrich said.
Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who resigned under indictment on campaign finance-related charges in Texas, also has grown dissatisfied with the president's stewardship of the conservative movement. DeLay told Goldberg that in coming years, when he is not fighting the Texas indictment, he plans to build a conservative grass-roots movement to rival MoveOn.org, insisting that divine inspiration brought him to that quest.
"God has spoken to me," DeLay said. "I listen to God, and what I've heard is that I'm supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican party, and I think we shouldn't be underestimated."
EXCERPTS FROM THE NEW YORKER: LinkHere