More than once, as George W. Bush ran neck-and-neck with John Kerry, Rove punched up the numbers for Lancaster County for a boost of confidence. Sure enough, the county delivered Bush 144,000 key votes — the most ever cast for a Republican in this county.

“(The votes) were quite a sweet number that night. I thank you,” the president’s top adviser told nearly 500 members of the Lancaster County Republican Party Thursday night on the occasion of their 150th anniversary celebration at the Lancaster Host Resort. Rove was grateful for the support, even though it wasn’t enough to help Bush carry the state.

As some 130 raucous but orderly protesters outside the auditorium lined Route 30 protesting the Iraq war and the man (Rove) they think played a hand in it, Rove exhorted the faithful to stand behind “complete and utter victory in the fight against terrorism. We were right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. America and the world are safer for it.”

Democrats’ chorus for “cut and run” now, Rove said forcefully, would only embolden terrorists the world over and signal that America cannot be trusted to keep its word.

“To retreat before victory is won would be a reckless act, and it will not happen on the watch of this president,” thundered Rove, who was the first to inform the president of the first hijacked plane hitting the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

“America is at war with a brutal and merciless enemy. 9/11 changed everything. (The president) understands we must run the killers into the ground.”

It was almost as if the president himself was speaking. Indeed, many have inferred that Rove, sometimes called “Bush’s brain” and “the Architect,” is the source of many Bush policies.

Over a 33-year relationship, the man who holds no college degrees has masterminded Bush’s ascension to the governorship of Texas and two terms in the Oval Office.

Rove’s fame as a potent and canny behind-the-scenes policy maker has taken a different turn in recent months. Rove has testified five times before a federal grand jury as part of an investigation into the source of an administration leak that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame’s diplomat husband had said Bush was lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

No one has identified Rove as the source of the leak, but a special prosecutor is expected to decide any day now whether to exonerate or indict Rove on a perjury charge for failing to reveal he had talked to a Time magazine reporter about Plame.

A jovial and confident Rove made no mention of the cloud over his head before the party loyalists in Lancaster.

Instead, he hammered on a theme that the Republican party has become the party in power at a crucial time in America because it is a party of ideas and optimism.

The party’s successes in the economy, getting two justices on the Supreme Court who strictly interpret the Constitution, and national security prove that, he said.

But Republicans can’t grow tired or timid, he warned.

It was believed Rove’s appearance here was partly to give a boost to U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and his anticipated tooth-and-nail contest with Democrat front-runner Robert Casey Jr. And early Lancaster County GOP press releases said Santorum would be a featured speaker at the event.

But a local GOP spokesman said Santorum could not attend because of legislative matters. Rove only mentioned Santorum in passing, saying he and gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann were “great candidates.”

Local Republicans paid $100 a head to hear Rove, former U.S. Rep. Bob Walker and others before the party’s annual spring fund-raising dinner. Some 150 paid $500 for a reception with the president’s deputy chief of staff.

Before hearing Rove’s pep talk on the war, local Republicans had to drive through a phalanx of people unhappy with their party, Rove and the conflict.

Many motorists honked in support or disgust at the display.

Almost all the 130 or so protesters held homemade signs, such as “Lancaster Says No To War, Greed And Lies,” and “Honk If You Hate Rove.”

Sherry Wolfe, 48, of Lancaster, held one end of an anti-war slogan fashioned on a sheet, while her daughter, Linda, 16, of Lancaster Catholic High School, held the other end.

Sherry Wolfe says she is “angry and ashamed” that county residents, especially in an area that embraces Christian values, would pay to bring a man like Karl Rove to speak.

“People are dying every day (in the Iraq war). He enabled this war on lies,” she said.

Standing next to two cardboard coffins draped in American flags, William Adams III, of Millersville, stood quietly with this sign: “Mr. Rove, your doctrine of pre-emptive war led to my son’s death.”

Adams’ son, 40-year-old National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Brent Adams, was killed in Iraq in December when a rocket struck his vehicle.

The father says he feels the war “is squandering men like Brent who believed in their commitment. I just feel a sense of disappointment with the direction the country’s heading.”

Matthew Smucker, who headed the protest and vigil for the Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice, said, “We want to send a clear message that not everyone in Lancaster agrees with Mr. Rove’s policies. He was instrumental in selling the war to the American people on falsehoods.”

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