In the wake of their stunning defeat this week, talk has turned to the failure of one of the principle architects of the right's game plan, Karl Rove. in particular stood out to me, positing that Rove may not be the smartest guy in the room anymore.
Eight years ago, Karl Rove was on the top of the political world. He had guided George W. Bush to a reelection victory while congressional Republicans picked up four Senate seats and solidified their House majority.
His dream of a permanent, or at least durable Republican majority in the country seemed at hand. He was the unquestioned top dog in the Republican strategist world and even Democrats who loathed him acknowledged that he was devastatingly effective.
Times change.
The framing of the piece reminded me of another pig-headed, bullish, arrogant blow hard with an eminently punchable face, albeit my own beloved pig-headed, bullish, arrogant blowhard with an eminently punchable face: Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots.
Neither Rove nor Belichick, of course, are above playing dirty to win, have an infamous disdain for the media, and are generally perceived as all around dick heads. In fact reading through the story it was almost an exact analogue, sometimes word for word, of the type of things critics say about the formerly untouchable, now increasingly out of touch football mind. The supposed defensive-minded genius isn't the smartest guy in the room anymore, and it's started to show over the past few seasons. Football observers have taken note, and a recent Sporting News poll of NFL players found that Belichick was the top pick for the league's most overrated coach.
Neither Rove nor Belichick, of course, are above playing dirty to win, have an infamous disdain for the media, and are generally perceived as all around dick heads. In fact reading through the story it was almost an exact analogue, sometimes word for word, of the type of things critics say about the formerly untouchable, now increasingly out of touch football mind. The supposed defensive-minded genius isn't the smartest guy in the room anymore, and it's started to show over the past few seasons. Football observers have taken note, and a recent Sporting News poll of NFL players found that Belichick was the top pick for the league's most overrated coach.
Let's try the transposition in the Washington Post piece:
Eight years ago, Bill Belichick was on the top of the football world. He had guided the Patriots to a third Super Bowl victory in four years.
His dream of a permanent New England dynasty seemed at hand. He was the unquestioned top dog in the defensive world and even players who loathed him acknowledged that he was devastatingly effective.
Since 2004, the Patriots, while coming close on two separate occasions, have won exactly 0 Super Bowls. In fact, in the past few years, they've fielded one of the league's worst defenses. This year their pass defense is yet again on pace for the worst in history.
Back to Rove.
Rove’s great genius in 2004 was to focus not on reaching out to swing voters as conventional political wisdom dictated but rather to concentrate on identifying, growing and turning out the Republican base. And that meant whites, and white men in particular.
Sound familiar? Belichick's strength too has been in bucking conventional wisdom, and eschewing big name free agent signings that he can grow from within his own system, often times ignoring the wider pool of candidates that might have done the job, in the name of system purity.
“Crossroads was a failure and Rove’s core strategy of base-centric GOP politics is a failure,” said a senior Republican consultant not favorably inclined to Rove. “There are not enough white men for the Rove view to work anymore. His time is past.”
Relying on white guys, like, say, Wes Welker and Danny Woodhead, isn't proving to be a tenable strategy in the NFL anymore either, it turns out.
Even when he was on top of the Republican political world, Rove was a divisive figure — he is an acerbic personality who doesn’t suffer fools gladly — so it’s not terribly surprising that in the wake of an across-the-board defeat for the GOP there are those questioning Rove’s role and future.
Belichick has already been through two of these Karl Rove moments in the 2007 and 2011 losses in the Super Bowl. He's not in any danger of being hung out to dry yet, but one wonders how many more chances he'll get to plot the course of his team if faced with a failure like the one Rove perpetrated this election season. I hope we never find out.
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