"Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

Rove has been accused of using the push poll technique to call voters to ask such things as whether people would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians". A former Rove staffer reported that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. The two spent the spring of 1973 crisscrossing the country in a Ford Pinto lining up the support of Republican state chairs.

Since leaving the White House Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. S. S.