"Holy Sh-t! I so agree with you. This was a completely orchestrated campaign set up by (dnc?) - the talking-head talk-show "pundits" were all spouting the same thing - Bush's ANG service termination is suspect. Bush didn't show up for a physical (bfd). Bush got preferential treatment (I can only hope so). Bush shirked his obligations (not). "
The main accusations to do with cocaine usage have been quietly undergirding the Fortunate Son campaign. To the DNC's horror, these never 'took' but they tried hard with: the Lts Bush-Bath connection (including in one of the USAT forged docs), Kitty Kelly, Hatfield's 'Fortunate Son' book, National Enquirer etc. Kitty Kelly's book might have been damaging but it was too much a stretch of anyone intelligent to imagine Laura ever as a drug pusher. In fact, in their zeal to bring the President down, the DNC completely overstretched their reach by including forged docs and talking points based on them. The campaign showed an influence by the extreme leftwing conspiracy theorists (e.g Hatfield wrote an X-Files guide too), and was doomed to failure from the start. It was also just plain dumb because it's obvious now that the voters don't care about Bush's TANG service in 1972. I'd like to know who architected the DNC campaign though. Rove would have done a much better job, if he wastes his time doing this kind of thing anyway.
"Rove would have done a much better job, if he wastes his time doing this kind of thing anyway."
In all fairness, he has to do some of these things. I have no doubt it was understood that, given a candidate like kerry with literally hours of damning material on file, all done in public circumstances (i.e. interviews, congress, medal throwing), it HAD to be used. Bush's MO is to keep himself totally apart from negative comments, scandals, the past, etc., (he did this in 2000 also), so the obvious vehicle was the 527's.
I suspect the SBV's, given their motives and background, have a good degree (possibly complete) of independence from the GOP, but that doesn't mean Rove didn't know what was coming down the pipeline and plan accordingly. To assume otherwise is folly. If SBV was going to attend to dragging out Kerry's damning past, then he didn't need to try to bring it up elsewhere.