RED ROVER :

Rove is already preparing for the next presidential election--still more than two years away`King Karl' Gets Ready Preparing for the 2004 elections (Howard Fineman, 6/03/02, Newsweek)

The next presidential election is two-and-a-half years away, but White House insiders, led by political guru Karl Rove, have sketched the outlines for 2004 even now. [...]

In a controversial speech last winter, Rove said that Bush's much-lauded role as leader of the war on terror would help GOP candidates this fall. Little noticed was Rove's insistence that they'd have to sell a domestic agenda as well. In fact, the White House is pursuing a two-tiered strategy to keep the House, win back the Senate and set up Bush for 2004. At splashy campaign-trail events around the country, Bush woos swing-voting moderates by talking about education, child care and job training. Rove, meanwhile, works on the interests of the conservative base. The wish list for the rest of 2002: a welfare-reform bill that encourages marriage; new "faith based" charity legislation that would establish a fund to teach churches how to win federal social-services contracts, and Senate confirmation for 11 federal appeals-court judges-all of them conservative favorites of the cultural right.

Get the judges confirmed and this may be the best first two years any president has ever had. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 6, 2002 8:08 AM