I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Karl Rove is practicing the technique of repeating a lie until people stop questioning it. But here he is again explaining away his description of the Tea Party as unsophisticated:
“I was thinking of the word ‘sophisticated’ in the way that I think of a lot of members of the media — pretentiously wise,” Rove told POLITICO
And here, again, is what Rove actually said to der Spiegel:
SPIEGEL: Are you convinced, then, that the Republican Party will be able to integrate the Tea Party without drifting too far to the right?
Rove: Sure. There have been movements like this before -- the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the pro-life movement, the Second Amendment rights movement. All of them popped up, insistent, loud, and relatively unsophisticated. They wanted everything now and for politicians to be with them 100 percent of the time. And after an election or two, people wake up saying, our system produces mostly incremental progress and takes time and compromise. That's exactly what's going to happen here. I meet a lot of Tea Partiers as I go around the country, and they are amazing people. Most have never been involved in politics before. This is their first experience, and they have the enthusiasm of people who have never done it before.
SPIEGEL: Is the Tea Party movement a repeat of the Reagan Revolution?
Rove: It's a little bit different because the Reagan Revolution was driven a lot by the persona of one man, Ronald Reagan, who had an optimistic and sunny view of what the nation could be. It was also a well-organized, coherent, ideologically motivated and conservative revolution. If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek. Rather, these are people who are deeply concerned about what they see happening to their country, particularly when it comes to spending, deficits, debt and health care.
He is clearly not using "sophisticated" to mean pretentious. In the first use, "unsophisticated" means an unrealistic expectation that political change happens immediately and without compromise. In the second, it means a lack of familiarity with Hayek.
The first reference was clearly not praise, because Rove immediately proceeds to define the "unsophisticated" belief as something that he understands is incorrect. The second reference to "unsophisticated" is only praise if Rove was trying to say that only pretentious snobs read Hayek.
I'm not the least bit surprised Rove is defending himself with straightforward lies. Why, though, do reporters continue to quote his lies without correction?