Rove set out to create a permanent Republican majority but wound up producing the opposite - the Obama presidency

Frightening as the image might be to ponder, "the architect" Karl Rove was stripped bare for all to see on Fox News' Hannity show Tuesday night, thanks to his odd response to Christine O'Donnell's win in Delaware.

Rove demonstrated to all what I have believed since 2000: that he is a political operative with little or no evidence of a philosophical soul. Voters -- equally soulless in his mind -- are mere commodities to deal with, and precincts are the way these commodities are organized. They are to be bought and sold with the micromanaging of a trade deal here or a pro-life direct mail piece there -- orchestrated by the ruling elitists in Washington.

One gets the feeling that he could have worked equally as happily for a Democrat simply by changing a few words on certain ads to certain districts.

Consider:

When Bush was in office, Rove predictably started out on a plan to form what he called "a permanent Republican majority" that would be constructed with a mushy new tone, a "can't we all just get along" mentality. The strategy would dictate that no one would ever return fire on political opponents -- while having a "flexible philosophy" to which Rove would adapt policy as issues came and went in certain parts of the country.

There was by design no coherent message of constitutional conservatism, which is what most of Bush's voters thought they were voting for. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

How and why Rove thought this could possibly work is beyond me. What he thought it would accomplish -- even if it were possible -- is an even more salient question. It could not work, and it did not work.

So I have to ask:

What will a Senate majority full of Olympia Snowes and John McCains and Lindsey Grahams get you? Easy. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid in power. This is exactly the legacy of the Bush presidency --and Rove was right there at the levers of power the entire way.

Truth be told, Rove's biggest architectural accomplishment is the Obama administration. By doing his part as senior advisor to the president to define conservatism down, he sullied the reputation and disoriented the understanding of what it means to be conservative to millions of half-informed voters nationwide.