Posted on 01/30/2012 10:02:34 AM PST by libh8er
It occurred to me that in the Karl Rove playbook you go after an opponent's strengths, not weaknesses. Rove has used this tactic throughout his political career to destroy opponents.. most recently in the swiftboating of John Kerry. Kerry's biggest selling point during the war on terror, the Dems thought, was going to be his service in Vietnam. The American people would see that Kerry had actually served vs Bush who supposedly dodged. Then he got swiftboated and his candidacy ended.
Now here we have Newt whose popularity among conservatives stems from his association with Ronald Reagan and promoting Reaganism. Then all of a sudden one day - out of the blue - we see a barrage of (out of context) quotes and clips of Newt dissing Reagan. Even Rush said never in his career had he heard Newt say anything negative about Reagan - meaning if he had, it had to be within context of something else Newt was saying. And yet headline after headline on Drudge screamed every negative thing (when seen out of context) Newt had said about Reagan. It stayed there for a day and a half. The next evening a visibly shaken and demoralized Newt fumbled in the debates and in 24 hours his candidacy was in collapse.
I don't know if Karl Rove is actively advising the Romney campaign, but I am seeing Rove written all over this.
I really don’t think Rove is considered part of the insider elite. He’s useful to them but that’s as far as it goes.
In retrospect Karl Rove did not serve George Bush well. He was credited with election strategy and in both cases the results were not ‘landslides’.
IMHO GWBush was a decent, honorable and humble individual with a strong sense of duty and gave Karl Rove more respect and credit than he deserved. He also listened to some very bad advice out of trust and loyalty.
That is why Newt is a better option - Newt listens to others but bases his decisions on the Constitution - not polls.
I have no doubt that Rove is part of it. The did not support Angle in Nevada, McDonald in Maryland and they are squeezing West out in Florida. Anyone who dares to challenge the RINO’s are getting their furry.
Could be but it looks like KGB, Hammas, Fatah and al Qaeda to me.
don’t know who did it..... don’t really care..... my mind is made up, and the “compassionate conservativism” of the bushie era is dead..... once we sink mcromney for good, then maybe it will sink in to the party once and for all
I’m sure Rove is making his contribution, but the method is pretty obvious, if you don’t mind spreading lies.
I think it needs to be strongly differentiated from the Swiftboat campaign, however.
That was true. Kerry really was a cowardly fake and a traitor. These are lies, many of which have already been disproved for those who trouble to look into them. There’s a big difference. Hundreds of patriots at the center of one case, hundreds of insider liars at the center of the other.
And of course, the media only support lies.
Absolutely. The swiftboat campaign was legitimate. My point was Rove's strategy is to attack an opponent's strengths, and not weaknesses like most other political consultants advise.
If I had a dollar for every time someone on FR, between 2001 and 2006 posted “Rove You Magnificent Bastard!!” I’d have enough money for a trip to the Super Bowl to root on my Giants plus enough for a side trip to the Bahamas before going home. How times and FR have changed.
He still is, if you consider the way he’s been getting inside people’s heads here recently.
I wasn’t that keen on Rove even back then. He was the guy who gave us Lincoln Chaffee, Arlen Specter, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others. He did a good job in Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, but he lost it in 2006.
Your above comments are a lie and a false smear of Bush's reputation and that of the Air National Guard, and you need to retract them with an apology.
John Kerry apparently obtained awards by fraud. He is reported to have violated orders and endangered his fellow Swiftboat sailors by goofing off, and then submitted false combat reports to coverup his misconduct. He apparently used falsified combat reports to obtain the award of decorations he did not earn or deserve, and then used those awards to request relief from combat duties. While still a commissioned officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, Kerry apparently engaged in unlawful aid and support of the Communist enemy combatants. Kerry's apparently treasonous activities and/or unlawful political activities in support of the Communist regimes caused him to receive a less than honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy, which the Presidential Executive Order of President Carter reversed with a grant of amnesty and multiple suspicious honorable discharges many years later. Kerry was also reported by the FBI as being in attendance at a meeting of terrorists planning the assassination of U.S. Senators who refused to vote against military support of the Republic of Vietnam.
Bush served as the pilot of an F-102 Delta Dagger fighter-interceptor in the Air National Guard while it was on active alert duty and as a training unit of the Air Defense Command (ADC). Due to his being several years younger than Kerry, he was not old enough to accumulate enough flight hours in the F-102 or a replacement aircraft to qualify for a TDY or a PDY combat assignment in the Vietnam Conflict. If Bush had been the same age as Kerry, he would have been able to accumulate the required minimum flight hours and his request to volunteer for the F-102 combat tour in Vietnam probably would have been granted in about 1968-69. Instead, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress refused to appropriate funding for the Air Force needed to sustain F-102 flight operations in Vietnam and avoid a downsizing of the fighter-interceptor groups in the United States. Consequently, the RIF (Reduction in Force) forced active duty F-102 and F-101 pilots to leave active duty and secure the available training instructor positions in the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard. This left the youngest and least experienced Air National Guard F-102 and F-101 pilots having less than 2,000 hours of flight time in these aircraft with no available positions to remain in these reserve branches. For the good of the service, these younger pilots not qualified with enough accumulated flight hours to serve as instructor pilots were encouraged to request or were simply ordered to be separated from the service before the end of the service contract or at the end of their service contract. This was all due to the Congressional budgeting and nothing whatsoever to do with the abilities of the individual pilots affected by the reduced military force structuring. All of the shenanigans which went on with Bush's drill schedules were related to his squadron needing to expend its flight budget and hours on its changed mission to training pilots. The squadron and group simply did not have a large enough budget to permit the youngest pilots who were not qualified as instructors to maintain their required minimum flight hours. If you need to blame someone, you need to blame the Congress for denying Lt. Bush the opportunity to accumulate enough flight hours in one of the unit's fighter-interceptor aircraft to qualify as an instructor pilot needed to fulfill the squadron and group's changing mission assignment.
Nope. That was from the point of view of the Democrats.
You associated your remarks with the lies by using the “swiftboating” terminology and meme.
The Swift boat veterans have been wrongfully maligned quite enough already. They had a duty to come forward and report the truth about Kerry committed a variety of heinous acts, including what is suspected to have been possible treason and/or other acts of disloyalty whaile retaining his officer’s commission in the U.S. Navy Reserve. The way in which you usedd these Democrat talking points and the use of the “swiftbotaing” terminology is wrong and offensive no matter what the reason for it appearing in the forum in its present form.
Lt. bush served honorably, and the perpetuation of the false accusations for whatever purpose and in whatever form is reprehensible.
I strongly agree with all of WhiskeyX’s remarks. (I was prepared to “flame away” and the distortions - but noted that WhiskeyX did a fairly good job.)
libh8er - if you present a POV of the Democrats - flag it as such and indicate that the POV is BS...and provide as much or as little justification ...but at least flag it as BS.
The first paragraph reads as if it was written by a Democrat - with no caveats or disclaimers. Therefore it is hard to tell if the 2nd paragraph is a complaint about Newt being subject to “honest revelations” or “false claims.” And of course - we know that Democrats think that Karl Rove is the devil incarnate - and your 3rd para. doesn’t differentiate your beliefs from Democrat beliefs.
2556 days since John Kerry promised, on national TV, to sign form SF-180 and release his military records.
LOL, my first imprssion of the picture, I thought I was looking at Mitt Romney. I didn’t realize before now that they looked and sound so much alike with all of their flippery.
I have a little macro that tells me how many days since Hanoi John said he’d release his records. As long as I live I’ll stay latched onto him like a dog on a bone. I bet I’ve posted the above picture 100 times on FR, most of those times noting how many days since he promised.
Note to Hanoi John... John O’Neil signed and released his SF-180 the day after you promised to release yours.
I also never understood the love affair with Rove...
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