(Via This Modern World 2008-05-28.)

Master GOP strategist Karl Rove on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, 18 May 2008:

ROVE: But look. The Republicans have got three things they need to do strategically and three things they need to do tactically.

Strategically, they better get their act together with an aggressive agenda of reform here at home about the things people are talking around the kitchen table.

What are the Republicans going to do about health care? What are they going to do about providing reliable and affordable energy? What are they going to do about jobs and keeping our economy innovative and competitive, encouraging exports? What are we going to do about helping people grapple with the cost of college education?

We’ve got great answers, Republicans do, on this, but they better get their act together in laying this out in a comprehensive way.

Menelaus Pappy O’Daniel and his son, Junior O’Daniel, in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000):

Pappy: Languishing! Languishing! Goddamn campaign is languishing! We need a shot in the arm! You hear me boys? In the goddamn arm! If the election held tomorrow, that goddamn Stokes would win it in a walk….

Junior: Well… he’s the re-form candidate, Daddy…

Pappy: Yeah?

Junior: Well, people like that re-form….

Hey! Maybe we should get us some!

Pappy: I’ll reform you, you soft-headed sonofabitch! How we gonna run reform when we’re the damn incumbent?

From Thursday’s Washington Times, Karl Rove’s advice for fuming bloggers:

Karl Rove teed off this afternoon on the liberal netroots, the coalition of far-left blogs and advocacy groups who are a new power bloc in the Democratic party.

The Web has given angry and vitriolic people more of a voice in public discourse, said Mr. Rove, who served as one of President Bush’s top strategists until he resigned this past summer, and is a noted technology nut.

… I’m a fan of many blogs. I visit them frequently and I learn a lot from them, Mr. Rove said. But there also blogs written by angry kooks.

The normal response would be some kind of pat reference to pots and kettles or motes and beams. But really this goes so far beyond ordinary hypocrisy that it’s more like a kind of surrealist projective performance art.

(Via Echidne of the Snakes 2007-11-09.)