Did Noted Turdblossom Karl Rove Warn Komen That It Was Making a Really Bad Decision?

Karen Handel’s, um, much-anticipated book about the implosion of Susan G. Komen for the Cure has finally hit shelves or is floating disembodied around the internets, and rumor has it that the book includes a surprise protagonist who was urging Komen to reverse its decision to cut cancer screening funding for Planned Parenthood: fucking Karl Rove. That’s right — the conservative answer to Teen Mutant Ninja Turtle archvillain Krang was, according to Handel’s account in the haplessly titled Planned Bullyhood, behaving like a sensible human being.

In her account, Handel admits that she herself was pretty “stunned” when Komen CEO Nancy Brinker told her that Carebear Karl had urged to “backtrack” on its decision to pull the rug out from under Planned Parenthood. Though Rove’s chief of staff Sheena Tahilramani called bullshit on Handel’s storytelling, Politico notes that Tahilramani wouldn’t say whether the entire episode was fictitious or whether Handel just didn’t tell it right.

If conservative reactions to Handel’s book are any indication, however, Rove may very well have been urging Komen to backpedal — Redstate’s Erik Erickson tweeted earlier this morning, “Ever had concerns about Karl Rove? Add this to the list.” Rove is a political graphing calculator, so he probably realized (even if he didn’t warn Komen as Handel contends) that Komen’s decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood was untenable. It’s not proof that Rove isn’t a maniacal conservative supervillain, just that he’s a far more sensible supervillain than some of his conservative colleagues.