"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.
You're probably right but the DU types really give far more credit to Rove than they should. They make him out to be an all-seeing and all-knowing being. He's probably more into GOTV campaigns and such things than planning dirty tricks campaigns. At least that's what I think. I could be wrong.
I'm not convinced that if the SBV's hadn't touched Kerry's Vietnam escapades that the Bush campaign would have. They seemed reluctant to touch that and Kerry's anti-war activities. His Senate career had a lot of meat for them to go after but the war-related stuff was too touchy to go after directly. They piggy-backed off the SBV's for that. Who would have foreseen the Swifties would have done so much damage to Kerry though? Their book is still #1 after so many weeks.