Gloria Borger & the media's reverence for Karl Rove

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

(updated below)

Gloria Borger of U.S. News and World Report is perfectly representative of the establishment media pundit. She possesses in great abundance the most common attribute which defines them -- namely, there is never an original thought that comes out of her mouth. Instead, she never does anything other than recite Beltway conventional wisdom and GOP talking points (typically the same thing) with complete fealty. For that reason, Borger last week made her exciting debut as a panelist on Fox News' Sunday Show.

We last visited with Borger when she was part of the notorious Chris Matthews panel castigating the Democrats for their terrible, foolish pursuit of the great Karl Rove as part of their investigation of the U.S. attorneys scandal (according to Borger, subpoenaing Rove was about nothing more than maximizing Democratic fundraising). Prior to that, back in November, she was one of the leading members of the media pack declaring Nancy Pelosi's speakership all but dead -- before it even began -- due to the Grave Crime to the Nation of failing to appoint Jane Harman as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Borger has a new column in U.S. News touting the genius of Karl Rove, and in it, she unintentionally reveals a critical insight into how our Beltway media functions:

Karl Rove knew exactly what he was doing. In a round of interviews as he exited the White House, the man President Bush called the "architect" of his re-election was designing something else: a push for Hillary Clinton's nomination. "I think she's likely to be the nominee," he told Rush Limbaugh. "And I think she's fatally flawed."

All observations that, coming from anyone else, might be considered routine punditry. But when Rove speaks, the political class pays attention -- usually with good reason.

The rest of the column is devoted to hailing the brilliance of Rove's plot to induce Democrats to nominate Clinton because of how vulnerable a candidate she is.

(Continued here.)