In the past the Tea Party has been fond of featuring President Obama as Hitler. But now one prominent Tea Party group has dolled up one of America’s most prominent Republicans in fascist regalia.

Karl Rove could have called it a day after successfully re-electing George W. Bush in 2004. It could have been the capstone on one of the most successful and substantive careers in modern American politics. Rove would have left a master strategist feared by his enemies, admired by his friends, and mythologized by observers of all persuasions.

Instead Rove hung around too long and embarrassed himself.

If Rep. Steve King enters the race for the open Iowa Senate seat he would start out as an early favorite in the Republican primary. A Wenzel Strategies poll found King would have a 15 point lead over Rep. Tom Latham in an eight-way contest. Similarly, Public Policy Polling found King with a large lead in every possible primary field combination they tested.

In any normal country, there would be no particular reason to expect 2013 to be an awful year. The right-wing Presidential candidate, who preached austerity, family values, and military adventurism, was soundly defeated by the center-left candidate, who favored, well, austerity-lite, personal freedom, and a fiscally convenient “peace dividend.” Overconfident and overfunded Republicans were similarly trounced in the House and Senate, losing seats in both despite stunning structural advantages.

It seemed that the Right’s perennial hobby horses, from favoring the wealthiest above all others and demonizing minorities of every type, to demanding that every non-military expenditure be slashed to the bone, had clearly been sent to the glue factory by the electorate. Alas, things are never what they seem in Washington.

One of the deepest divides in our alarmingly escalating Class War is one of mutual misunderstanding between the two sides about what money is for: The Job Creators can’t comprehend why the Lower Orders should have such fripperies as food, housing, and medical care (or worse, cell phones and TV’s), while those being steadily ground into mush under their well-shod heels can’t understand why people with enough money to buy their own states don’t at least buy states where the weather is better.

Karl Rove’s billionaire pals gave him nearly $400 million to defeat President Obama in particular and Democrats and their issues in general, and he got waxed. Badly.

There’s much talk in the media of late about the need for a moment of “self-reflection” on the part of Republicans, owing to the fact that they just lost the popular vote in five out of the last six Presidential elections. The only problem with that otherwise reasonable conclusion seems to be that the mirrors they’ve evidently been using are demonstrably unsuited to the task.

As dispiriting as it is to be a Democrat these days, what with the equivocating and serial cave-ins to the opposition, at least it isn’t downright embarrassing. All but the most craven of Democrats at least vaguely attempt to run on a platform of some sort, and have the decency to make at least desultory attempts to implement it if elected. More importantly, they generally make a pretense of playing by the rules in elections.

Not so Republicans.

Because Americans aren’t anxious enough forced to digest anemic monthly jobs numbers, an economy teetering on the precipice, the steady stream of illegal home foreclosures, a Democratic President poised to shiv Social Security and Medicare, and the country’s insidious metamorphosis into a security state, they also have to worry about something so basic as the right to vote. That’s because über-bully Karl Rove, not content to have put the Dauphin of Dumbfuckistan in the White House, decided that controlling the Executive Branch wasn’t enough. Like his Machiavellian comrade and patron, Charles Koch, he “want[ed] his fair share–and that’s all of it.” Hey, if that means depriving American citizens of their civil rights, well, so be it. There are always going to be winners and losers, amirite? Whaddya gonna do about it?

Enter Greg Palast and Ted Rall.

Aside from the death threats to Todd Akin, the insider account of a Karl Rove fundraiser was enormously revealing. First of all, you get an eye into the Crossroads strategy, and since it promises to have $300 million behind it, it’s a heavy part of the strategy to recapture the White House.