Karl Rove
in his speech today:
"Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world. And Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world," Rove told Republican activists. "That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."
Juxtapose this quote with this excerpt from a Washington Post story in December on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security:
One stark example was the White House's blockade of a [Tom] Ridge-supported plan to secure large chemical plants. After Sept. 11, [Christie Todd] Whitman had worked with Ridge on a modest effort to require high-risk plants -- especially the 123 factories where a toxic release could endanger at least 1 million people -- to enhance security. But industry groups warned Bush political adviser Karl Rove that giving new regulatory power to the Environmental Protection Agency would be a disaster.
"We have a similar set of concerns," Rove wrote to the president of BP Amoco Chemical Co.
In an interagency meeting shortly before DHS's birth, White House budget official Philip J. Perry, who also happens to be Cheney's son-in-law, declared the Ridge-Whitman plan dead.
"Tom and I would just throw our hands up in frustration over that issue," Whitman recalled.
Chemical plant security? Millions of lives at risk? But we can't do anything that might make life a bit difficult for your buddies in the petrochemical industry, right Karl?
Deeply, profoundly, and consistently wrong. He's the one living in a pre-9/11 world.