KARL ROVE PLAYS ‘EM LIKE A VIOLIN, AGAIN: Remember all the hoopla about how hard David Frum’s new book was on the Administration? How the White House was issuing dark warnings about Frum’s public statements deviating from the Administration line? How the press ate that up? Cracks in the formerly solid facade. . . dissonance in the well-tuned orchestra . . . at last, leaks!

Er, only now the book’s out, and according to Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, “Mr. Frum sides in this book with the hawks in the administration, repeatedly dissing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, while pressing for a strong-armed reorientation of American foreign policy.”

Then we find out that:

Mr. Frum holds up a sunny vision of a post-Saddam Hussein future in which Iraq becomes “a reliable American ally,” Iranians are “emboldened to rise against the mullahs,” the Saudis and other Arab states modernize, and “new prosperity” is brought “to us all, by securing the world’s largest pool of oil.”

The horror! The White House must be shaking in its boots over that one. And there’s this bit of political dynamite:

Mr. Frum claims that President Bush and John F. Kennedy “owed their connections with the public above all to the power of their words.”

Can you say “setup?” I knew that you could.