Forbes
Jeff Bercovici, Forbes Staff
3/22/2012 @ 2:49PM
In his fight for re-election this fall, President Barack Obama will have support from the unlikeliest of quarters: Karl Rove, former top aide to George W. Bush.
Writing on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal today, Rove, normally a staunch partisan and Republican loyalist, declared, “Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession.” Further enumerating his accomplishments, Rove added, “Mr. Obama ended the Iraq War and…Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch.”
It was the surprise of the political season, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. While it took until now for him to issue a full endorsement, Rove has for months been using the Journal’s op-ed page to signal his approval for the president. Just last week, in fact, he praised Obama’s work ethic, writing, “He is working a lot harder than he thought he would.”
In February, he lauded the president’s motives in establishing a new agency, saying, “Mr. Obama set up a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 to make sure people are treated fairly.”
And last September, Rove explicitly accused his own political allies of doing voters a disservice by opposing Obama, writing, “[H]is Republican opposition puts party ahead of country.”
