I think this past week was the official “Paranoid Left” week. It’s a new holiday from what I understand, and many on the left are religiously devoted to observing it.

To kick off this new week, many on the left seem to have chosen an old favorite, Karl Rove, as their topic. To hear them talk about this guy, he might well rule the whole world, instead of just the American government as they previously surmised.

Yes, Rove is SO scary good, he has expanded his sphere of control from this greatest nation on Earth to nations abroad. What’s next… Disneyworld?! Heaven help us!!!

One of the first shots fired was by no less than Rep. Maurice Hinchey of upstate New York who, spoke recently to constituents at a community forum in Ithica, New York (a beautiful area, by the way). The interesting thing is that a reader of one of the Internet’s most popular (and best) blogs, Little Green Footballs was present, and he tape-recorded the event and passed the information back to LGF. Here is what he recorded, including a Q&A with the very same person recording Hinchey:

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): Well, you know, they are manipulating the media, they did it in the very beginning through intimidation. They would intimidate the people in the, uh, in the press conference. And … they would ask — they would allow questions to be asked only of people that they knew were going to ask the right kind of questions, from their point of view. And, you know, that has its effect, had, had its effect on people. People have been — people in the media have been intimidated. The media has changed in the last four years. People have changed in the last four years. They’ve had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it’s handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.

Audience Member: Do you have any evidence for that?

Congressman Hinchey: Yes I do. Once they did that —

Audience: [Murmuring]

Congressman Hinchey: …once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush’s draft dodging. Once they were able to say, ‘This is false! These papers are not accurate, they’re, they’re, they’re false, they’ve been falsified.’ That had the effect of taking the whole issue away.

Audience Member: So you have evidence that the papers came from the Bush administration?

Congressman Hinchey: No. I — that’s my belief.

Audience Member: OK.

Congressman Hinchey: And I said that. In the very beginning. I said, ‘It’s my belief that those papers, and that setup, originated with Karl Rove and the White House.’

Audience Member: Don’t you think it’s irresponsible to make charges like that?

Congressman Hinchey: No I don’t. I think it’s very important to make charges like that. I think it’s very important to combat this kind of activity in every way that you can. And I’m willing — and most people are not — to step forward in situations like this and take risks.

Audience: [Clapping and cheering.]

Congressman Hinchey: I consider that to be part of my job, and I’m gonna continue to do it.

It’s part of Congressman Hinchey’s job to forward conspiracy theories? Ummm… I think I want to run for congress. This job suddenly sounds like it’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Next, James Taranto comes to the rescue with two days worth of Rove Conspiracy reports in his column, Best of The Web Today:

Rove Manipulates Australian Government’s Abortion Debate…
It seems Karl Rove has been busy Down Under, too. So we learn from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer (”intelligent as a post!”) op-ed by Australian writer Greg Barnes:

It’s been 25 years since Australia tore itself apart debating the rights and wrongs of abortion. But the issue has resurfaced courtesy of the preparedness of Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his advisers to take a leaf out of Karl Rove’s tactics textbook and the successful export of U.S. fundamentalist churches to Australia over the past five years.

Over the past month a group of right-wing Australian members of Parliament, sanctioned by the conservative Howard, have begun a campaign to outlaw “late-term abortions.” This group is allying itself with churches and anti-abortion groups that are borrowing heavily from their U.S. colleagues when it comes to campaign tactics.

Howard is an unashamed admirer of Rove, President Bush’s political tactics mastermind. When Howard introduced his own political strategist, Lynton Crosby, to Bush in 2001, he called him the “Karl Rove of Australian politics.”

For crying out loud, isn’t Rove’s plate full enough, what with manipulating the media and destroying the AARP and the New Deal and all?

Rove Engineers Secret Attack on AARP…
Blogger Steve Soto offers the AARP some advice:

First, if he hasn’t done so already, AARP Chief Executive Officer Bill Novelli needs to call Karl Rove and demand that the White House condemn the ad and the tactics of the USAN. Of course Rove will not do this, and Novelli should tell Rove that failure to do this will be interpreted by the AARP as a sign that the White House supports and was a partner in this smear and in future smears.

Second, the AARP should do a press conference after the call to Rove for two reasons: first, they should show the despicable ad to the media and point out to what lengths Bush’s supporters will go to smear the AARP; secondly Novelli should reveal at the press conference that he has demanded the White House repudiate the ad and the USAN smear campaign, and has received no such repudiation from the White House. As a result, Novelli should tell the media that the AARP will assume the White House supports this smear.

AARP is doing nothing of the sort; the Sun reports its spokeswoman “said the group is ‘not reacting’ to the attack ads.” But at least one Democrat, Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, has called on President Bush to repudiate them.

Why in the world should the White House even dignify this ad by commenting on it? Here we come to the paranoia of the Angry Left, which is firmly convinced, as during the Swift Boat episode, that the evil genius Karl Rove is pulling all the strings. As Soto writes:

Making the USAN a pariah and calling them out for what they really are and exposing who is really behind them, while pointing out what the White House and its cronies on the Hill and at the RNC are willing to do to destroy the AARP will kill off not only the USAN but Bush’s remaining privatization effort as well.

Rove Manipulating Professional Sports?
Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle spots yet another thread in the world-wide web of conspiracy in whose center sits the omnipotent Karl Rove:

I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that [Barry] Bonds has started sounding like a Karl Rove client. His talking points had a familiar ring.

Can’t find any weapons of mass destruction? Change the subject to democracy in Iraq.

Don’t want to answer questions about what you said to the BALCO grand jury? Pretend that it’s a pending legal issue, even though you have immunity and the federal prosecutor in the case has already said that all the athletes can repeat their testimony in public.

President Bush, of course, used to be in the baseball business, and in his 2004 State of the Union address he actually mentioned the subject of steroids. We’re not sure what Rove is up to here, but we look forward to having it explained by the left-wing blogs.

You know, if Rove is as good as Democrats and Liberals say he is, then you might as well give up hope now. Anyone this good is destined to become the first official “Ruler of The World.” Or maybe he is already and we just don’t know it!

Finally, there is some definite irony to the level of obsession over Rove. I know that I was obsessive with my anti-Clinton rhetoric at times during his two terms. I look at all this stuff and I realize how silly I looked at times. Not that Clinton didn’t do some ridiculous things, but those of us on the right over-obsessed for sure at times.

Well, the left has taken our playbook and added its pages too it seems. With that said, at least those of us on the right understood that it was President Clinton in charge, not someone else. Liberals can’t even get that part right.

What is the ultimate lessons-learned here? That, when Hillary announces that she’ll be running in 2008, we’ll need to moderate our tone. I know that many on the right have strong feelings regarding Senator Clinton. However, behaving like our counterparts above will surely help the Senator, both in the Democratic Primaries and in the election itself, should she win the primaries.

Just a bit of food for thought.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com