The Republican Battle Plan for 2006 and 2008

Rove Offers Republicans A Battle Plan For Elections

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006; Page A01

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove offered a biting preview
of the 2006 midterm elections yesterday, drawing sharp distinctions
with the Democrats over the campaign against terrorism, tax cuts and
judicial philosophy, and describing the opposition party as backward-
looking and bereft of ideas.

"At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally
different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a
post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview.
That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make
them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."


Democrats are "deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong" on
national security, Karl Rove said. (By Jason Reed -- Reuters)

Rove spoke at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee
and, with RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, provided a campaign blueprint for
fighting the Democrats. They spoke at the beginning of an important
election year in which Republicans are battling historical trends,
public unrest over Iraq and a spreading corruption scandal that
together threaten to reduce the GOP majorities in the House and the
Senate and possibly shift control of one or both chambers to the
Democrats.

At a time when Democrats have staked their hopes in large part on the
issue of corruption, Rove and Mehlman showed that Republicans plan to
contest the elections on themes that have helped expand their
majorities under President Bush. They see national security and the
vigorous prosecution of the campaign against terrorism at the heart
of the GOP appeal to voters.

Rove's RNC address was a rare public appearance at a time when he
remains under investigation in the CIA leak case that resulted in the
indictment and resignation of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff,
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Despite the investigation, Rove is still
Bush's top political adviser.

Taking no questions from the audience or the news media, Rove used
his platform to excoriate Democrats for "wild and reckless and false
charges" against Bush on the issue of domestic spying and what he
called an attempted smear against Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. at his
Supreme Court confirmation hearings last week. "Some members of the
committee came across as mean-spirited and small-minded, and it left
a searing impression," Rove said, referring to the Senate Judiciary
Committee.

Mehlman echoed Rove on national security and taxes and explicitly
addressed the corruption issue. Republicans and Democrats have
offered competing plans to tighten the rules regulating the
interaction between lawmakers and lobbyists, but, as the majority
party, Republicans stand to lose more if there is widespread public
revulsion over the scandal.

Calling for the vigorous prosecution of any wrongdoing, Mehlman
sought to insulate his party from the spreading scandal involving
lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the indictment of former House majority
leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and the guilty plea of former
representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.). "If Republicans
are guilty of illegal or inappropriate behavior," Mehlman said, "then
they should pay the price and they should suffer the consequences."

Rove referred only indirectly to the corruption issue, warning
Republicans against becoming complacent in power. "The GOP's progress
during the last four decades is a stunning political achievement," he
said. "But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant
party -- in this case the Democrat Party -- when its thinking becomes
ossified, when its energy begins to drain, when an entitlement
mentality takes over, and when political power becomes an end in
itself rather than a means to achieve the common good."

Democrats were quick to respond, with Democratic National Committee
Chairman Howard Dean challenging Rove's fitness to serve. "Karl Rove
only has a White House job and a security clearance because President
Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in
revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative," Dean said in
a statement. Dean added: "The truth is, Karl Rove breached our
national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and
wrong."

It was four years ago this week when Rove, appearing at another
meeting of the RNC, said Republicans would make terrorism a central
issue of the 2002 midterm elections. Rove's remarks infuriated
Democrats, who protested that, until then, Bush had stressed
bipartisanship and national unity in response to the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.

Republicans made historic gains in 2002, and Bush successfully used
the issue again to help secure his reelection in 2004, despite
growing public dissatisfaction with the administration's handling of
the war in Iraq. Yesterday's speeches by Rove and Mehlman signaled
that the White House and the RNC intend to pursue much the same
strategy in a midterm-election year that begins with Republicans on
the defensive.

Mehlman and Rove accused the Democrats of trying to weaken the USA
Patriot Act and of embracing calls for a premature exit from Iraq.
They defended Bush's use of warrantless eavesdropping to gather
intelligence about possible terrorist plots. "Do Nancy Pelosi and
Howard Dean really think that when the NSA is listening in on
terrorists planning attacks on America, they need to hang up when
those terrorists dial their sleeper cells in the United States?"
Mehlman asked. Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the House minority leader.

Before completing their meeting, the Republicans rebuffed efforts to
pass a resolution on immigration that would have put the national
committee at odds with the president over the issue of a guest-worker
program. Instead, the RNC approved a resolution supporting Bush's
position.