By David S. Broder
The Washington Post

Karl Rove exited arguing with everyone — so spirited in his own defense as he blanketed the Sunday talk shows that he hardly needs further assistance from anyone. The resignation he handed President Bush last week, 17 months before the end of their White House tenure, writes an equivocal ending to a controversial political partnership. But Rove himself is not about to apologize for anything — not for “outing” Valerie Plame Wilson, not for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a “fatally flawed” candidate, not for questioning former senator Max Cleland’s commitment to fighting terrorism, not for reducing the Republican Party to its lowest level of public support in a generation. And not for his contributions to the divisiveness of American politics.

It is hard to generate much sympathy for someone as unrepentant as Rove, someone who at most acknowledges that his party is “a little bit behind the curve” when it comes to the voters. One listens in vain for any sign that a decade at the center of the political-government structure has dented the sublime self-confidence of the influential White House strategist, and all one hears are the echoes of an isolated, insulated presidency.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake for Democrats — or other Republicans — to think that “Rovism” has run its course and that the last chapter in this story has been written.

The error would be to assume that Rove’s goal is bounded by the career of George W. Bush. It has been — and remains — larger and longer-lasting, the domination of America by a certain type of Republicanism.

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