Demonstrators Protest Karl Rove's ABQ Fundraiser for Heather Wilson for Senate

Karl Rove -- uncouth political strategist and GOP babysitter to the uncouth stars of the right wing -- who was once known as (George W.) Bush's Brain and referred to as "Turd Blossom" by Bush himself, headlined a fundraiser yesterday at the Tinnin residence in Albuquerque for none other than Mz. Heather Wilson, who's running for U.S. Senate now. Rove and Wilson became pals and co-conspirators of sorts during the time Wilson served as NM-01's congresswoman, and she joined former GOP Sen. Pete Domenici and worms like Mickey Barnett in trying to get rid of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Note that Barnett is one of the fundraiser's co-hosts. How sweet. It's like a reunion of the can Iglesias conspiracy ring.

Folks had to pay a premium of $1000 per person to get into yesterday's event -- but all the thousand-dollar donors also got a personally signed copy of Rove's book, Courage and Consequence. Who could ask for anything more, even though Media Matters points out the tome is rife with falsehoods? Hey, they're the falsehoods right wingers cling to, even today.

Naturally, New Mexico Dems couldn't resist demonstrating their distain for everything Rove-Wilson-GOP outside yesterday's event, and they did it with spirit and pizzazz. Check out the photos of some of the protestors with their pointedly critical signs. They had to make SOME dent in the attention-getting department with all those well-heeled GOP campaign pork providers, right? You betcha! (Oh wait, that's Sarah Palin's schtick.)

Blast From the Past
You may recall that Iglesias refused to pursue bogus "voter fraud" cases and allegedly wasn't working fast enough on certain corruption cases, and thus became an enemy of Wilson-Domenici et al. He was fired and eventually Wilson-Domenici got into trouble for pushing Iglesias to prosecute cases they perceived would help Wilson's chances at reelection.

Although neither one actually received the punishments they deserved, you'd have to say their squeaky clean facades, constructed so carefully over the years, didn't look so squeaky clean anymore. Domenici ended up retiring -- claiming a malady that miraculously disappeared when he left office -- and Heather lost her seat to Dem Martin Heinich when she ran in the GOP Senate primary in 2008 and lost to the right-wingers' right winger, Steve Pearce.

You can read more about the misadventures of Heather in he Iglesias case, as well as her real voting record, below. Always good to get the facts instead of the spin.

Why Rove for the headliner of this big bucks event? I guess Karl is considered a good money draw out here, and he does have those high-flying PACs that can easily pay for swoops into swing states when the time is right. Heather also clearly wants to rub elbows with right-wingers as much as possible to try to make the NM GOP base forget her long-time claims to being "moderate" when she believed that might help her reelection chances. Of course the truth is that she was a Bush-Cheney cheerleader through and through, so I'm sure it was easy to get Rove to make a trip to Albuquerque on her behalf.

However, Rove is also persona-non-grata among Tea Party advocates. He has regularly insulted them and pointed out their stupidities, so I don't know how much the Rovey vibes will help her with the right-wing extremist/Tea Party wing of the NM GOP, which is expected to back her opponent -- current Lt. Gov. John Sanchez. Well, you take what you can get when you're Heather Wilson -- an old-hat candidate in an era when the GOP wants fresh meat for their rabidly extreme base voters.

Heather Wilson on the Record:

• In mid-October 2006, Wilson and Domenici each called Iglesias personally, asking him about the status of the courthouse corruption investigation and possible indictments of New Mexico Democrats. Iglesias, seeing the calls as unwarranted interference in a criminal case by elected officials, refused to give them any information. Iglesias later testified that he was “sickened” by the calls from Wilson and Domenici. [Politico, By John Bresnahan &Josh Gerstein, 8/12/09]

• Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) called Iglesias’s dismissal “the most egregious case of political abuse of the U.S. attorney corps” and said he has forwarded the information obtained by his panel, including depositions of Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, onto a Justice Department prosecutor. [Politico, By John Bresnahan &Josh Gerstein, 8/12/09]

• CQ also found that Wilson doesn't buck the president quite as much as she and her campaign handlers might like us to believe. Starting in 2001, CQ found that Wilson voted in support of Bush's stated positions on issues 88 percent of the time. In 2002, she supported the president 90 percent of the time, in 2003 her support level was 89 percent, in 2004 it was 88 percent. Only in the last year, 2005, did Wilson put some serious distance between herself and Bush, voting on his side of issues just 70 percent of the time. [Wilson Record a Maverick Streak, Not GOP Buckin' , ABQ Journal, by Michael Coleman, 3/12/06]

• In 2001, Wilson voted with House Republican leadership 94 percent of the time, according to CQ. The following year, in 2002, that number dropped to 90 percent. In 2003, the number edged up to 91 percent, then dropped to 79 percent in 2004 and then 82 percent last year, in 2005. [Wilson Record a Maverick Streak, Not GOP Buckin' , ABQ Journal, by Michael Coleman, 3/12/06]

• Democrats criticize Wilson for her decision to return only $10,000 of about $50,000 she received from Americans for a Republican Majority, or ARMPAC, a political action committee founded by DeLay. [Wilson Money Draws Criticism, ABQ Journal, by Michael Coleman, 9/14/06].  Tom Daley was eventually convicted of money laundering and conspiracy.