Rove Taking on Greater Responsibilities?

Via Digby, the following "news".

Rove, who was Bush's top political strategist during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, will become a deputy White House chief of staff in charge of coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.

Rove will continue to oversee White House strategy to advance Bush's agenda and will "make sure we have an open and fair process for the development of policy and to make sure the policy is complementary and consistent with the various councils," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"He is one of the president's most trusted advisers who has played an integral role in strategy and policy development for a long time," McClellan said.

The cold-blooded reptile has grabbed even more power, not that he needed it. Back in the bad old days of the first term of the Emperor George II, Rove had plenty of power and it was well documented. Oh, and I don't think there was ever an open and fair discussion of policy issues. Stick to message. Always stick to message. We are here for the wealthy and the Christians. Doing good so long as good is for them.

"I think it's an enormous position of power, and it's hard to overstate. I think he's unique in the modern presidency," says Lou Dubose, a Texan journalist and Rove biographer. Rove's office is tight-lipped about the extent of his duties, but the few un-vetted memoirs to have escaped from this highly disciplined administration have all portrayed him as the single most powerful figure in it, with the (possible) exceptions of the president and vice-president.

"Karl is enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political adviser post near the Oval Office," John DiIulio, a former presidential adviser, wrote in a notoriously frank email to a journalist from Esquire magazine, after resigning in 2001. "Little happens on any issue without Karl's OK, and often he supplies such policy substance as the administration puts out."

Earlier this year, for instance, Paul O'Neill, Bush's former treasury secretary, gave an account of a pivotal cabinet meeting in late 2002 to discuss a second round of deep tax cuts, at which the president apparently had second thoughts about focusing so much of the benefits on the wealthy. "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" Bush asks, according to O'Neill's account. Rove brings the president back in line, urging him to "stick to principle". Rove won the day, and O'Neill was forced out of the cabinet.

Rove is more powerful than some-old Treasury Secretary that's for sure. He is the serpent in the temptation drama of our lives. None of these people can be trusted, not a one of them. They can't afford to tell the truth because that narrative wouldn't sell, yet I never cease to be amazed at the gullibility of the American people. Disgusting.