Bill Moyers: 'Greed and God won four elections in a row' for Rove

Bill Moyers: 'Greed and God won four elections in a row' for Rove

David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Thursday August 16, 2007

Bill Moyers will consider the departure of Karl Rove in a video essay released early by PBS to RAW STORY. Moyers, a Texan like Rove and Bush, is not easily swayed by the commentators and administration figures who have been quick to describe Rove as "brilliant ... mastermind ... boy genius."

"Karl Rove figured out a long time ago," says Moyers, "that the way to take an intellectually incurious, draft-averse naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas was to sell him as God's anointed."

"Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat," explains Moyers. "Never mind that in stroking the base's bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion."

"Rove was also shaking down corporations for campaign cash," Moyers continues. "Crony capitalism became a biblical injunction. Greed and God won four elections in a row. ... But the result has been to leave Texas under the thumb of big money, with huge holes ripped in its social contact, and the US government in shambles."

Moyers' final reaction to Rove's departure is to wonder, given that Rove has "confessed to friends his own agnosticism ... how all those folks on the Christian right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a skeptic, a secular manipulator."

The following video will appear on Friday on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal.

Partial transcript:

What struck me about my fellow Texan, Karl Rove, is that he knew how to win elections as if they were divine interventions. You may think God summoned Billy Graham to Florida on the eve of the 2000 election to endorse George W. Bush just in the nick of time, but if it did happen that way, the good lord was speaking in a Texas accent.

Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious draft-averse naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God’s anointed in a state where preachers and televangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat -- a battering ram, aimed at the devil’s minions, especially at gay people.

It’s so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber, and if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew that, in politics, you better bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.

At the same time he was recruiting an army of the lord for the born-again Bush, Rove was also shaking down corporations for campaign cash. Crony capitalism became a biblical injunction. Greed and God won four elections in a row - twice in the lone star state and twice again in the nation at large. But the result has been to leave Texas under the thumb of big money with huge holes ripped in its social contract, and the U.S. government in shambles - paralyzed, polarized, and mired in war, debt and corruption.

Rove himself is deeply enmeshed in some of the scandals being investigated as we speak, including those missing emails that could tell us who turned the attorney general of the United States into a partisan sockpuppet. Rove is riding out of Dodge city as the posse rides in. At his press conference this week he asked God to bless the president and the country, even as reports were circulating that he himself had confessed to friends his own agnosticism; he wished he could believe, but he cannot. That kind of intellectual honesty is to be admired, but you have to wonder how all those folks on the Christian right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a skeptic, a secular manipulator. On his last play of the game all Karl Rove had to offer them was a hail mary pass, while telling himself there’s no one there to catch it.