For years, the Washington press corps salivated over every utterance from Karl Rove. Whatever he said was gospel. Yesterday, Rove gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute -- which was attended by a large contingent of the media. Rove was up to his usual tricks of just spouting off without any regard for the facts. Now that the "political genius" has a boss with approval ratings below 30%, his schtick might not work anymore. EJ Dionne does a nice job dissecting some of Rove's most egregious claims:
Most astonishingly, Rove tried to make the case that Bush's tax cuts actually left the rich paying more. Everyone knows the Bush cuts in levies on dividends, capital gains and inheritances overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. But here was Rove playing class politics by arguing that the wealthy now pay a larger share of total income taxes than they did before Bush.Karl Rove just makes stuff up. He thinks the press are patsies and will believe anything he says. For the most part, he's been right.
This is statistical flimflam, of course. It leaves out payroll taxes, which hit most Americans the hardest. And the wealthy are paying more of the total share of income taxes, even though their rates are much lower, because their share of national income has gone up. Rove's numbers actually prove the rich are getting richer. But the fact that Rove tried to sound like William Jennings Bryan is the surest indicator that the administration is worried about its image as protector of the privileged.
What Karl has learned, though, is that strategy may have worked on the press corps, but it doesn't work on prosecutors. They call that perjury, not spin.
