Rove's eye will be on FISA vote

Take note, Democratic presidential operatives: Karl Rove will be very carefully watching the Senate floor vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Addressing the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting Wednesday, Rove urged the party faithful to watch closely how the Democratic presidential front-runners, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, vote on the issue.

“Do they or do they not want our intelligence agencies to be listening in on conversations between terrorists in the Middle East who may be plotting to hurt America?” Rove asked.

A former top adviser to President Bush, Rove is still seen as perhaps the pre-eminent Republican electoral strategist, with Beltway insiders hanging on his every word. And while “The Architect,” as Bush calls him, used most of his speech to attack Clinton’s and Obama’s record on health care, taxes and the war in Iraq, Rove particularly homed in on FISA.

The issue cuts to the core of national security in a post-Sept. 11 world, Rove said, and he is betting that voters will favor the GOP’s argument over concerns about trampling civil liberties raised by Democrats.

Throughout his remarks, Rove repeatedly referred to the FISA program as a “terrorist surveillance program,” unlike many Democrats, who prefer to call it “warrantless wiretapping.”

He urged the party officials to devise communication strategies that find “creative and sustaining ways” to “talk about these contrasts.”

Both Clinton and Obama have raised concerns about the program, indicating they’ll not support the current version of the bill pending in the Senate, which grants immunity to the large telecom companies that assisted the government.

“The Bush administration has blatantly disregarded Americans’ civil liberties over the past seven years, and I simply will not trust them to protect Americans’ privacy rights,” Clinton said in December.

Rove also said that withdrawing immunity for telecom companies would “effectively gut” the program.

Despite his eager anticipation for a floor vote on the matter, Rove may have to wait.

With the temporary FISA statute set to expire Feb. 1, Democratic leaders are mulling another extension, which could push a potential decisive vote on the matter past Election Day.