Rove Quotes & Sayings

You, in the moonlight, in this library, in this dress
" His eyes rove over me, from my frothy pink skirts embroidered with dark pink roses, past the swell of my breasts, up to the creamy skin of my neck. My breath comes fast as his gaze lingers on my lips. He's barely touching me, but it feels as though he's already undressed me with his eyes.
"Its the most beautiful thing. Like a dream." His voice is hoarse and full of wonder.
"Then its my dream, too," I confess as I claim his lips with mine, — Jessica Spotswood

My name is Patrick Fitzgerald ... I like to tear the tops off small animals. — Karl Rove

If you really want to diminish a candidate, depict him as the foil of his handler. This is as old in American politics as politics itself. — Karl Rove

Sheldon Adelson, for example, gave more than $53 million to Super PACs, but all eight of the candidates he supported lost.59 Karl Rove, a strategic mastermind who won fame advising George W. Bush, oversaw groups that spent $175 million and still lost twenty-one out of thirty elections. — Laurence H. Tribe

I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes. — Karl Rove

Soon, the sums pledged at the Koch donor summits began to soar from the $13 million that Sean Noble raised in June 2009 to nearly $900 million at a single fund-raising session in the years that followed. "This Supreme Court decision essentially gave a Good Housekeeping seal of approval," acknowledged Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, the conservative super PAC formed by the Republican political operative Karl Rove soon after the Citizens United decision. — Jane Mayer

Rosy waited as long as she dared then sat forward and let her eye rove Franny's lounge, up and down the shelves, looking for something, not even sure she could bring herself to act if she saw it again, already convinced this was her worst ever idea — R.G. Manse

Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real antiwar movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an antiwar rally. — Karl Rove

The Tea Party movement is a wide and diverse group. It will hurt the Republican Party if some elements of the Tea Party decide to become third party advocates because it will split the conservative vote. — Karl Rove

I believe in traditional marriage. — Karl Rove

White House political adviser Karl Rove was one of Robert Novak's sources for the 2003 disclosure of a CIA operative's identity, according to a story published today in "Duh" magazine. — Andy Borowitz

On Leven's banks, while free to rove, And tune the rural pipe to love, I envied not the happiest swain That ever trod the Arcadian plain. Pure stream! in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; No torrents stain thy limpid source, No rocks impede thy dimpling course, That sweetly warbles o'er its bed, With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread. — Tobias Smollett

Elizabeth Blair of brother Frank: he could not let even a great man set his small dogs on him without kicking the dog & giving his master some share of the resentment. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself. — Scott McClellan

I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls. — Wesley Clark

I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble. — Karl Rove

Somebody gets to be smart and somebody gets to be dumb. If we win, it'll be because of the president. And if we lose, it'll be because of me. — Karl Rove

Not to be slack and negligent; or loose, and wanton in thy actions; nor contentious, and troublesome in thy conversation; nor to rove and wander in thy fancies and imaginations. Not basely to contract thy soul; nor boisterously to sally out with it, or furiously to launch out as it were, nor ever to want employment. — Marcus Aurelius

You need to look at Congress as having a certain capacity. Now, the capacity varies from year to year and from body to body, but there is a finite amount of things that Congress can attentively do. — Karl Rove

For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living. — May Sarton

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. — Matt Taibbi

You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to the math. — Karl Rove

I think wealthy conservatives are busy investing in profit and job creation and enterprise, and wealthy liberals, many of them either from the media industry themselves or from - they recognize the value of communications and are more ready to put money into a less profitable enterprise, namely the media. — Karl Rove

after all had eaten, then Geraint, For now the wine made summer in his veins, Let his eye rove in following, or rest On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work, — Alfred Tennyson

It's been just a year since the RNC committed to revamp the way they help our candidates with its 'Growth and Opportunity Project,' and already there are signs of improvement. From new leadership and initiatives in the digital arena, to improving the GOP ground game (as we just saw with David Jolly's victory in FL-13), to the historic decision to restructure the primary calendar and primary debates, the RNC's steps will help keep the House and to take the Senate in 2014, win the White House in 2016, and build for the future. Looking forward to more progress in the months ahead. — Karl Rove

(Jason Leopold is) "a nut with Internet access (Page 439). — Karl Rove

Negative politics have always been around. — Karl Rove

At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views of the world. — Karl Rove

I think it was Osama bin Laden's [idea to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq]. — Karl Rove

We need to be asking for the vote in the most powerful way possible, which is to have people asking for the vote who are comfortable and look like and sound like the people that we're asking for the vote from. — Karl Rove

Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives. — Karl Rove

Mr. Luskin also says that Rove did not knowingly disclose classified information and did not tell any reporters that Valerie Plame worked for the C.I.A. — Michael Isikoff

Karl Rove described Obama as "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini, and making snide comments about everyone who passes by." Unlike George Bush, who's the guy at the country club who makes snide comments, and then passes out. Now this characterization, of course, was something Mr. Rove just completely pulled out of his bulbous, gelatinous a$$, but remember this is America, a land where people believe anything they hear. — Bill Maher

Today, you've got hedge fund billionaires aligned with Karl Rove, running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you [Bernie Sanders]. I know this game. I'm going to stop this game. — Hillary Clinton

There has to be a consequence to failure. Schools in the inner cities cannot be told, 'Oh, we want you to teach every child to learn how to read and, incidentally, if you fail to do that there's no consequence,' .. There has to be a consequence to failure, and the Title I money needs to follow the child. — Karl Rove

And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened,
If still they live, rove through the world now saddened. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I know enough about European politics to know you've got a lot of crazy people who make their way onto the ballot. — Karl Rove

What I really wanted to do was linger in the tidy lines that Marcus had scored into the earth. I wanted to sit in the exact center of the spiral and wait for the plants to unfurl themselves. I wanted them to climb and rove over my limbs until I burst into bloom with them. — Tiffany Baker

Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as 'deficits as far as the eye can see.' But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk? — Karl Rove

She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl's toughness. She has a boy's gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and rough as a girl. She was as pretty and delicate and dainty as a boy. She turned boys' heads like a girl. She turned girls' heads like a boy. She made love like a boy. She made love like a girl. She was so boyish it was girlish, so girlish it was boyish, she made me want to rove the world writing our names on every tree. I had simply never found someone so right. Sometimes this shocked me so much that I was unable to speak. — Ali Smith

Pride is a fault that great men blush not to own: it is the ennobled offspring of self-love; though, it must be confessed, grave and pompous vanity, Iike a fat plebeian in a rove of office, does very often assume its name. — Joanna Baillie

Our [Republicans'] object is to avoid having stupid candidates who can't win general elections, who are undisciplined, can't raise money, aren't putting together the support necessary to win a general election campaign, because this money is too difficult to raise to be spending it on behalf of candidates who have little chance of winning in a general election. — Karl Rove

In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision. — Karl Rove

I've been booed on stages. I'm a little bit tougher than to walk off a stage because someone says something ugly. — Karl Rove

In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect. — Karl Rove

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't sit still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. — Robert W. Service

You may be right that people say: 'You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.' — Karl Rove

These new groups would act as the privatized auxiliary force Rove had been dreaming of for years. Rove told the moneymen, "People call us a vast right-wing conspiracy, but we're really a half-assed right-wing conspiracy. Now," he emphasized, "it's time to get serious. — Jane Mayer

The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead - higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery. — Karl Rove

The mainstream media may have trouble resisting the temptation to declare that Karl Rove has been demoted, but the truth is quite the contrary. By giving up his role as deputy White House chief of staff, Rove has been freed to do what he does best: shape big issues and develop strategies to win elections. — Fred Barnes

None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life. — Thomas Cole

Rove and his attorneys can parse the words all they want, but it is now clear that while Rove may not have given a reporter Plame's name, he clearly identified her by telling the reporter that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. — Louise Slaughter

What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice. — Karl Rove

And not only that, I also have the MacBook Air which is really cool. Even my wife is jealous of my MacBook Air. — Karl Rove

Of troubles know I none,Of pleasures know I many -I rove beneath the sunWithout a single penny. — Eleanor Farjeon

All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all. Reality is what you say it is, ... — Karl Rove

I thought you loved your husband." She blows air through her nose.
The action reminds me of an agitated horse. Her eyes rove from my shoes and land in disgust on my face. "I love yours too. — Tarryn Fisher

The labor movement must be destroyed. — Karl Rove

Guy got in a gyrocopter in Gettysburg, flew under the radar all the way to Washington and came - What if he had had rather than petitions to Congress had had a bomb? — Karl Rove

As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing. — Karl Rove

Look, there ought to be politics in politics. — Karl Rove

I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics. — Ed Gillespie

Well, I would never admit to copying Karl Rove's play book, but there's no doubt that what the Bush people did in 2004 was impressive. They had neighbors talking to neighbors. They did a remarkable job increasing Republican turnout in states like Ohio and Florida. — David Plouffe

I figured out Karl Rove's political strategy
make gas so expensive, no Democrats can afford to go to the polls. — John F. Kerry

Well, I'm a Christian. I was a born a Presbyterian and became an Episcopalian. — Karl Rove

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash. — Karl Rove

So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. — Walter Cronkite

Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder. — Hank Johnson

If you make a mistake, clean it up quicker rather than later. — Karl Rove

[T]he economy remains the top issue for the electorate. — Karl Rove

Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy. — Karl Rove

Our competition for American business is no longer in the next county or the next state, it's around the world. — Karl Rove

Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevski's conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness. — Jim Thompson

Herman Cain is probably well-liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party, conservative movement and tea party movement. People like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert and so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so he can say, 'Look: This is not a racist anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look: We have a black man.' And look he's polling well and he won a straw poll. — Janeane Garofalo

Potentially significant, by the way, because we don't know exactly what's in Matt Cooper's notes, and we don't know - and we don't still know the answer to the crucial question of whether it was Rove or somebody else that revealed Valerie Plame's name to him. — Michael Isikoff

Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed. — Lewis Gannett

But I am scared. Everybody's scared."
"You know what I mean, like scared scared. Like coward scared, like if you never went to begin with. But with everything you've done nobody's going to doubt you." Then she made a somewhat frantic speech about a website she found that listed how certain people had avoided Vietnam. Cheney, Four education deferments, then a hardship 3-A. Limbaugh,4-F thanks to a cyst on his ass. Pat Buchanan, 4-F. Newt Gingrich, grad school deferment. Karl Rove, did not serve. Bill O'Reilly, did not serve. John Ashcroft, did not serve. Bush, AWOL from the Air National Guard, with a check mark in the "do not volunteer" box as to service overseas.
"You see where I'm going with this?'
"Well, yeah."
"I'm just saying, those people want a war so bad, they can fight it themselves. Billy Lynn's done his part. — Ben Fountain

We also quoted Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, acknowledging that Rove did speak to Cooper late on the week prior to the article coming out, which would have been July 10 or 11. — Michael Isikoff

Whether on Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceas'd;

Whether in Heav'n ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air,
Where the melodious winds have birth;

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wand'ring in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!

How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd, the notes are few!

- "To the Muses — William Blake

To the Muses
Whether on Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceas'd;
Whether in Heav'n ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air,
Where the melodious winds have birth;
Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wand'ring in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd, the notes are few! — William Blake

To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time. — Victor Hugo

If we do with Latinos what we did with African-Americans, Republicans and conservatives will be doomed. — Karl Rove

I left the White House in 2007. You know, I knew when I went there that it would be for a limited period of time. I was grateful that the average tenure of a white house senior aide is 18 to 20 months. I was there for nearly seven years. — Karl Rove

My parents, particularly my father, had been used by commentators, political journalists and political commentators, to attack me, and the collateral damage was the reputations of my father and my mother. — Karl Rove

Crossroads is second to none in our support of Tea Party candidates. In 2010 and '12, we spent over $30 million for Senate candidates who were Tea Party candidates. We spent almost $20 million for House candidates who were Tea Party candidates. — Karl Rove

The Democratic Party's problem is that voters don't believe the president's claims that the economy is thriving. Even people with jobs feel apprehensive. Paychecks are flat, growth anemic, and people are worried about their children's prospects. Mr. Obama had a 38% approval on handling the economy in the Sept. 9 Fox News poll. In the Sept. 7 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 67% believe America is on the wrong track. — Karl Rove

If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and passionate members of his opposition, he'd have a hard time coming up with a better tool than Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give them a culture in which alpha status requires months of focus and resource-consumptive preparation, provide them with metric tons of psychotropic confusicants, and then ... ignore them. It's a pretty safe bet that they won't be out registering voters, or doing anything that might actually threaten electoral change, when they have an art car to build. — John Perry Barlow

Republicans don't have to accept evolution, economics, climatology, or human sexuality, but I just watched a week of their national convention, and I need them to admit the historical existence of George W. Bush. If your party can run the nation for eight years and then have a national convention and not invite Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, or Tom DeLay, you're not a political movement, you're the witness protection program. — Bill Maher

To win in November, Republican candidates must show they are in touch with voter concerns about growth, jobs, paychecks, government spending and debt. The only way to do this is by offering specific, persuasive ideas. — Karl Rove

No sinful word, nor deed of wrong, Nor thoughts that idly rove; But simple truth be on our tongue, And in our hearts be love. ST. AMBROSE. Let us all resolve,--First, to attain the grace of SILENCE; Second, to deem all FAULT-FINDING that does no good a SIN, and to resolve, when we are happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling on them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature of their daily life; Third, to practise the grace and virtue of PRAISE. HARRIET B. STOWE. — Mary W. Tileston

When you appoint someone, you appoint somebody because of their character, their convictions, their abilities. And not because you have a belief, a confidence, in a foreordained outcome in any given decision. — Karl Rove

I think if you talk to my colleagues, I was less than a fearsome individual. — Karl Rove

This is why I stayed away," he growled against my mouth as his hands started to rove over me with knowing, ruthless passion. "Can't be near you without wanting you. Can't stop myself anymore
— Jeaniene Frost

Watch out Mr. Bush! With the exception of economic policy and energy policy and social issues and tax policy and foreign policy and supreme court appointments and Rove-style politics, we're coming in there to shake things up! — Tom Toles

Conservatives or better, pro- corporate apologists hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like " progress ," " opportunity ," and " individualism " into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right ... This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today. — Bill Moyers

I think it's dawning on some Democrats that obstructing the Patriot Act, like they've been obstructing everything else, is bad for them politically. — Karl Rove

Would the Iraq War have occurred without WMD? I doubt it, — Karl Rove

It's not comfortable for me to write about my family. I'm not comfortable writing about me. — Karl Rove

Remember the Tea Party movement didn't get started in September of 2008 when the bank bailout was passed. It really began on Feb. 19th, 2009 when a television commentator named Rick Santelli stood up and said what the hell are we doing bailing out people who couldn't afford a mortgage by taking money from people like me who are prudent? — Karl Rove

The young May moon is beaming, love.
The glow-worm's lamp is gleaming, love.
How sweet to rove,
Through Morna's grove,
When the drowsy world is dreaming, love!
Then awake! - the heavens look bright, my dear,
'Tis never too late for delight, my dear,
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear! — Thomas Moore