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June 23, 2005

Go no more a-roving

By now I'm sure everyone's heard of Karl Rove's little outburst yesterday:

"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

(The New York Times has the quote the other way around and all as one, interestingly enough.)

Memo to the Democrats: that tickle in your throat is probably a short length of four-pound test. Sure, what he said is insensitive and silly, but this is Karl Rove. Remember? The Dark Prince and all that? Whatever it is you're doing, it's what he wants.

Anyway, what really gets my goat about it is the linguistic switcheroo in the Democrats' language. Here's the man himself, John Kerry (he says, nervously lifting a quote from Michelle Malkin's blog):

For Karl Rove to equate Democratic policy on terror to indictments or therapy or to suggest that the Democratic response to 9/11 was weak is disgraceful.

Yeah, but see, Rove didn't say "Democratic". He said "liberal". That's not the same thing. It doesn't make what Rove said any more coherent, but this widespread belief that right=conservative=Republican and left=liberal=Democrat might be the dominant conversational disease of our time. Way more dominant than, say, libel chill. It's always disappointing to see it go unmedicated.

Posted by Chris Selley at June 23, 2005 11:16 PM