Rove: 'Tea Party' may be risk to GOP

Updated 23m ago
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY

Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush's presidency, says the "Tea Party" movement could have lasting influence in the nation's politics if it remains decentralized but could hurt Republicans if it backs third-party candidates who siphon votes from GOP candidates. "There's a danger from them, particularly if they're used by political operators ... to try and hijack" elections, he says.

Rove says Tea Party activists, who want to limit taxes and government's reach, could expand their clout if they emulate the 1960s civil rights movement, the gun rights movement and abortion opponents. Those groups grew "from the bottom up" and found "a raggedly unified voice," he said in an interview with USA TODAY about his memoirs Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight, out Tuesday.


Q&A: What Rove thinks Obama is doing right
POLITICS BLOG: Mitt Romney's warning to tea party activists

Rove, 59, calls President Obama "undisciplined, unengaged, aloof and focused on the wrong things" and suggests that if Obama's health care overhaul fails, he will revert to a more limited agenda.

Rove, a Fox News commentator and Wall Street Journal columnist, said the gulf between Obama and Republicans in Congress is a "shocking failure."

Obama, he says, campaigned as a centrist but moved left in office. Asked whether Bush did the same thing in his 2000 campaign, then moved right, Rove says, "I disagree."

Rove says that if Obama's health care overhaul fails, he "could come back and try to get things done in an incremental fashion." Asked whether Obama will be re-elected, Rove notes that presidents have "an enormous ability to affect the agenda," but adds, "he's not on a good trajectory."

He also rejects suggestions that Bush failed to collaborate with Democrats in Congress and says Republicans' reluctance to work with this White House is understandable because "Obama spent one year dissing them."

Rove says his book is his attempt to set the record straight on Bush's tenure. He bristled at the idea he's trying to rewrite history and settle scores. "I sort of bridle at the word 'rewrite,' " he says. "What I wanted to do was pull back the curtain ... in order to have a more full and complete understanding of these difficult and consequential times that we lived through."

In the book, Rove says Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq in 2003 if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction there. He also writes that Bush should have landed in Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 instead of flying over the region in Air Force One.

In the interview, Rove also said:

•Bush is "comfortable" with his decision to remain silent about his successor and will become more visible "over time."

•The pressure of White House life contributed to Rove's divorce last year. "It made it more difficult to heal things that needed to be healed," he says.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... rove_N.htm