Those decriers of “hate” on the left just can’t imbibe enough hatred for Karl Rove to quench their “tolerant” and “compassionate” appetites.

What drives them to this persistent state of unmitigated and unforgiving rage? I’ll tell you what it’s not. It’s not that he’s an unfriendly, hateful, uncompassionate, unlikable ogre — because he is none of those things.

It’s also not about Iraq, for even the Democrats’ most fantastic claims can’t reasonably pin that one on him — though they’ve tried.

The painfully obvious answer is simply that he has made his career beating Democrats and keeping them out of power most egregiously with that intractible “unilateralist” George W. Bush.

People forget that the left’s infernal hatred for President Bush began way before their famous catch-all excuse, the Iraq invasion, was a glimmer in the president’s eye. Their permanent antipathy began with the Democrats’ 2000 electoral defeat.

It didn’t matter that Bush didn’t draw first blood in the endless Bush/Gore saga in Florida. It was irrelevant that Bush was on the receiving end of an unprecedented Democratic party-wide conspiracy to steal the presidential election. All that mattered was that he wasn’t compliant. He wouldn’t get out of their way.

When the United States Supreme Court finally said, “Enough is enough,” to the Democrats’ disgraceful, chad-manipulating, rule-of-law crushing, propaganda-filled Dade charade, the Democrats’ misappropriated victim status in one of the most colossal PR flimflams in American history. And who was most responsible for making them victims?

That’s right. That “right-wing Rasputin,” the ubiquitous Karl Rove.

He was there from the beginning. No one has been a greater enabler of the pernicious George W., not even Dick Cheney. To the left, Cheney might be the de facto president, but Karl Rove paved the way for both of these demons to be in power. He has earned himself a special place in Hades.

Anything that has gone wrong for Democrats — from successes in the War on Terror, to sustained economic growth, to the discrediting of their darling Joe Wilson — had to be laid at the feet of Karl Rove. No one else was quite as masterful at derailing their grand schemes of derailing the Republicans’ grand schemes as Karl Rove, so when things went awry for Dems, Rove had to be behind it.

Thus, when Rove testified to the grand jury, Dems were just sure he committed perjury. Why? Because he is Karl Rove, the kingmaker of evil kings, most notably “King George XLIII.”

They were sure Rove would be “frog-marched” out of the White House in handcuffs. Why? Because he is Karl Rove, the grand obstructer of Democrat nirvana.

Now that the mad genius has announced his intention to leave the White House, salivating leftist bloggers are fantasizing there will still be a humiliating (and criminal) end to Rove’s career. They’re on their knees sending up (or sideways) secular prayers that the insatiable Democratic congressional pseudo-investigative machine will virtually imprison him with endless subpoenas and ensnare him in another perjury trap.

Rove truly has driven them crazy from day one. And I do mean crazy. Remember when formerly revered CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite speculated that Rove was behind the release of the Osama bin Laden tape on the eve of the 2004 presidential election?

Even Democrat operative James Carville, who one would think through empathy alone would be less anxious to succumb to his party’s negative spin on (and unintentional mythological elevation of) Rove, recently wrote a piece opining that despite his “spectacular successes” in winning elections, Rove has single-handedly “lost an entire generation for the Republican Party.”

I don’t know where Sir James got his crystal ball, but I’d be a little less sanguine about the Democrats’ short-term capitalization on a war fatigue they helped bring about. Before counting Republicans out for a generation, he better be sure his party handily prevails in the 2008 election, which is far from certain at this point, believe it or not.

More recently, mainstream media players are milking Rove’s impending departure for all the sadistic pleasure it can provide them and their followers. They beg him to answer questions about Hillary Clinton, and when he responds they accuse him of “relentlessly attacking” her.

An Associated Press “reporter” in the Walter Cronkite mode speculated that the Machiavellian manipulator had turned his sights on Hillary as part of a calculated ploy to get the left to rally behind her because Rove allegedly fears Edwards and Obama would be tougher to be beat.

The AP reporter went on to portray Rove’s recitation of the objective fact that “more people have an unfavorable than favorable opinion” of Hillary as “harsh criticism.”

The only way you can win with the left is if you let them win. And Rove, as long as he can help it, is never going to let that happen.