I see that the Obama campaign is, wisely, modeling much of its campaign planning around Karl Rove methodologies.
There’s not a thing wrong with that. Certain segments of the political Left’s obsession over Karl Rove over the last 8 years has been laughably paranoid and obsessive; for example, the movie Bush’s Brain made my ex- and I laugh out loud many times because it was just so stupid. My favorite part of that movie was where Karl Rove supposedly, while working for Texas state politicians, managed to get Federal authorities (the FBI and a Federal judge) to arrest and convict political opponents; short of garbage like the Clinton Body Count or the “9/11 Truthers,” you just can’t get more paranoid non-reality-based than that.
The truth is that Rove is part of a long and honorable tradition of very smart political campaign strategists. He’s really smart and really good at what he does–which is perfectly legitimate. Although sometimes his tactics–like the tactics of almost all major political campaigns, Democratic or Republican–are regrettable, for the most part there’s not a damned thing wrong with them. Getting your message out to voters effectively, making sure your supporters know exactly why they support you, making sure your message is popular or at least acceptable to voters, and getting your voters out to the polls are all exactly how politics is supposed to work in a democratic nation. It speaks well of the Obama campaign that they’re willing to look hard at all that and follow it, and are willing to ignore the more paranoid parts of their base in so doing.
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I live in Arkansas, and am friends with a former Clinton staffer, a staunch life-long Democrat. He’s always said that the biggest problem with Karl Rove is that he doesn’t work for them.
thats an unusual article. Playing a GOTV strategy is hardly a Rovian innovation, its SOP. The reason there are campaign offices in universty towns in michigan is because MI is (was) a swing state so the goal is to get every voter to the poll to get that plurality of votes statewide for teh electoral college apportion.
A true rovian strategy would be to atttack your opponents’ strengths, classic example being going after john kerry for his military record and making light of his service and purple heart. McCain tried this by his short-lived ad series poking fun at Obama’s celebrity, for example Overall, Obama hasnt done this much, preferring to model his ads 2/3 bio and 1/3rd attack ads on Mccain’s policy proposals. The perception of mccains strengths – his service, his POW experience, etc are largely untouched as themes by Obama. The one major exception is the argument that Mccain has superior foreign policy judgement, and on that score Obama has gotten in a good attack in his stump speech (and echoed it at the debate), about the iraq war starting in 03 not 07 and quetsioning the war on terror strategy of iraq over afghanistan (agree or disagree, its a valid realm of policy debate and one that speaks powerfully to the average joe at home. Bin laden still alive, etc). Still, i think that obama’s attack on that front is less powerful in terms of persuasion as the passive victory that obama got on foreign policy, by simply appearingon the same debate stage as mccain and being seein to hold his own on the foreign policy topic. By being unable to demonstrate his superior strength on foreign plicy relativeto obama on teh national stage during the debate, mccain basically Roved himself.
There’s a perception among the left that they lost in 2004 because Rove played dirty by allowing 255 veterans to give their opinion of John Kerry’s stabbing them in the back after getting himself sent home on a technicality. So, this time around we get massive campaign finance fraud, massive vote fraud, and a total dereliction of duty by the supposedly independent press.
Now we’re even, or something.
So, this time around we get massive campaign finance fraud, massive vote fraud, and a total dereliction of duty by the supposedly independent press.
You sound like the leftists on Dailykos circa 2004 bemoaning the theft of Ohio. Markos banned any mention or even the slightest implication that Bush stole the election in 04 from the frontpage of DailyKos, and banned many commentators who kept pushing conspiracy theories in the diaries. Congratulate yourself; you’re officially more unhinged* than the Great Orange Satan.
Yes, because we all remember the vast number of arrests of Diebold employees in Ohio 2004 for GOP vote fraud.
All these headlines about arrests for vote fraud at ACORN and fraudulent (sometimes involving felonious theft) credit card donations to Obama are exactly the same as a wacky conspiracy theory that has not a shred of evidence.
Are you seriously this dumb? Seriously?
Congrats, you fail at having any basic common sense.
Tone it down, please.
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