The Empire retires?

There's a new kind of darkness come to the Sunshine State. Karl Rove, whose bald pate is sometimes described as looking like a shaved testicle, has bought himself a house in a small development on the gulf coast in the western half of the Florida panhandle. You may have a hard time finding it on the map. It's quite a way from any place with a name you might recognize; the kind of place that gets hurt really, really bad by the hurricanes that scream through now and then. The mangroves and the vegetation that used to protect the dunes are now gone to be replaced by condos and beach houses and the country types who used to inhabit the area have been replaced by more economically upscale and in this case at least, a morally bankrupt politician.

I could imagine all sorts of reasons that Karl would choose to spend at least part of his time in a remote area, even if locals aren't particularly likely to admire him any more than I do, but it seems to interest Raw Story to a degree I find amusing. The stereotype of the typical "liberal" often is someone of limited means with a jealous grudge against those with less limited means. It's not true, but of course one will find examples.

The story focuses on how large and expensive is his abode as though to provide a very unneeded reason to dislike Rove. It has to make a Floridian smile. Perhaps to a rust belt city dweller a 2500 square foot house is big and a million dollars for a seaside property is expensive, but Welcome to Florida. Even in the midst of a real estate slump a 50,000 square foot house was completed last month, just a few miles up the coast from me. A big chunk of the people who live here don't need mortgages and a million buys a rather average house if it's within sight of the water. Did anyone think a high level king maker like Rove couldn't afford it - regardless of his party affiliation? I'm actually surprised at how modest it is compared to the palatial Rush Limbaugh seaside estate in Palm Beach.

The real surprise though, is that the real base of the Republican party, and I don't mean the money people, the influential people, but the guy whose house has wheels, the small businessman resentful of taxes, the retired military lovers of authority who always vote Republican, the Religious right; that such people support Rove and Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney even now is what amazes me. That they think the Party represents them, is on their side and is lead by struggling people just like them, is beyond understanding. But let's not do so much to further the false image of Democrats that serves the Republicans so well. Let's not make demons of anyone with money when it's those who get rich by lying, cheating and stealing; those who use economic power to subvert politics to nefarious ends who are our opponents. Karl Rove isn't evil because he made a few bucks, but because he made it the way he did.