Rove Slated As Keynote Speaker For TN Fundraiser

Karl Rove, Republican grand strategist and now news analyst, has been booked as the keynote speaker for the Tennessee Republican Party's annual Statesman's Dinner July 26 at the Nashville Convention Center. The fundraiser is one of the state party's main events of the year.

Rove, who is working with the McCain campaign, will undoubtedly be speaking on the current political climate and the national strategy for maintaining GOP control of the White House.

On their official web site the party says it "cordially invites you to participate" and then, later in the announcement, says again, "join us." Members of the media, however, are not invited to attend.

No one there is likely to ask Rove about the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Enron stock he held while helping shape George W. Bush's energy policy. Or about how he later, under advice of White House counsel, sold them in advance of Enron's collapse.

No one, now that he's back in the "trenches" will likely ask him about how he used a false identity to create fake campaign flyers discrediting a Bush competitor in Texas. Or about how he used the same technique for Bush's run against then-Texas-governor Anne Richards, implying she was a lesbian.

During Bush's 2000 presidential nomination battle against McCain, Rove led an effort that implied he fathered a black child out of wedlock. And, more recently, Rove was implicated in the outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame with the intent of discrediting her husband who had attacked Administration evidence used to justify the Iraq war.

The list of dinner attendees so far includes former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist; Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker; Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey; as well as U.S. Representatives Marsha Blackburn, David Davis, Jimmy Duncan, and Zach Wamp.