Rolling over for Rove?

Watching a Jan. 16 speech by Karl Rove to a Republican group on C-Span tonight, I got a sense of why the Dems keep rolling over for Bush on the FISA bill. Rove said that the leading Democratic candidates, Hillary and Obama, were in favor of preventing US intelligence from listening in on the conversations of terrorists if their phone calls passed through the US. That is of course a gross distortion of the position of those who are trying to maintain a modicum of FISA oversight over unchecked monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet communication. But the way it was framed - they want to keep those who are trying to keep us safe from tuning in on those who are trying to kill us -- seems to make the Democrats quake in their boots. Here's one more 'nod to Dodd,' who's vowing again to filibuster any bill that guts FISA and grants telecom immunity.

On the whole, Rove's criticisms of Hillary and Obama were so limp and familiar that I began to wonder if the Republican attack machine might be as tired as the party's policy precepts. But I wouldn't count on it.