If you're going to discredit a politician you disagree with, don't depend on attacking his beliefs or record — instead, go straight for a Lord of the Rings insult. Or so that's what Karl Rove seems to believe. The Republican consultant went on The O'Reilly Factor last night to call presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders "an elderly, dyspeptic Bilbo Baggins."
We might point out that calling anyone an "elderly" Bilbo Baggins is redundant, seeing as the J.R.R. Tolkein character celebrates his 111th birthday in The Lord of the Rings. "Dyspeptic," on the other hand, is a grade-A SAT word meaning "having indigestion or consequent irritability or depression."
Rove's TV call-out was actually his second time using this insult towards Sanders this week; it first appeared in Karl's Washington Post op-ed titled "Clinton Wallops a Cranky Hobbit," published on October 14. (Rove is obviously super proud of this burn, and not at all concerned about the fact that it opens him up to a world of unflattering comparisons to other Tolkein creatures.)
Meanwhile, Bernie is putting his money where his mouth is, refusing a campaign donation of $2,700 from Martin Shkreli, who recently made headlines for drastically raising the price of a lifesaving drug often used by AIDs patients. Sanders' campaign donated the money to Washington’s Whitman-Walker health clinic. Even Rove would have to agree: Sanders is a hobbit with integrity.