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May 19, 2013
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 McCain Campaign Revamped by Rove ProtégéPosted on Sep 6, 2008
“Fun Steve is dead” was the announcement that Steve Schmidt, the McCain campaign adviser who The New York Times notes “worked closely with Karl Rove” in 2002 and 2004, made to his team at a particularly low moment last summer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the bombastic tactics Team McCain has since adopted can be traced to the demise of “Fun Steve.”
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By cyrena, September 7, 2008 at 9:19 pm Link to this comment
By rage, September 7 at 12:20 pm
Rage,
I love the post. Thanks for the excellent (and entertaining) style.
I particularly like the use of the term ‘buffoonery’. Not sure why that so caught my eye in the midst of such overall excellent prose, but it did.
Report thisBy fedupinfla, September 7, 2008 at 9:01 pm Link to this comment
Call me crazy but…Doesnt this feeling of real change finally possible and all this momentum behind Obama seem eerily reminisent of 2 other great Democrats? (whose greatness was tragically extinguised prematurely) Can anyone say JFK & Bobby??
Report thisNo I don’t think he’s a messiah & (I’m offended when ReCONs call him that)...but I do think he cares a lot more for the REAL everyday people than John (I don’t know how many houses I own) McCain. People who worry about how they’re going to afford getting back & forth to work with gas prices so high. Who have to buy generic more than name brands because their grocery bills have doubled in the last 8 years. The kind of people who buy their socks at Wal-mart and can’t REMOTELY imagine spending $300 G’s on an outfit!
Sorry, but I don’t want a reactionary, hot-tempered, war-hardened old man with 1 foot in the grave (who was caught singing “Bomb, bomb, Iran” on youtube) to have his finger on that red button. I want a man whose nature it is to intelligently think through a problem and approach it from all angles. Lets not forget that this man graduated from Harvard Law having been head of the Law Review. THE most prestigious position there is. AND he was the 1st black man to do it. McCain, by his own admission graduated 5th from the BOTTOM of his class in the Naval Academy. Not a candidate for Mensa to be sure. And McCain has the reputation of being nasty when he’s not agreed with. (check out YouTube if you don’t believe me) No wonder Bill O’Reilly worships at his altar…He sees himself in McCain.
I’m encouraged when I see blogs like these because it gives me hope that the evil empire will soon be vanquised. In the words of a wise man…“May the Force be with you, Obama”
By rage, September 7, 2008 at 1:20 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
“This new environment, he has told friends, is easily manipulated because of round-the-clock thirst for news, increased competition, lowered standards created by the proliferation of outlets and hunger for the outrageous.” Schmitt to the NYT
And, just how is this ruse any different from all the past pathetic schemes and ridiculous spectacles Gramps’ team has already clumsily deployed to evade any semblance of discourse on the real issues in this election? The end is obviously near! They’ve overused the POW stint at the Hannoi Hilton to the point where, if that geezer enters the Way-Back Machine one more time with that stupid timer jammed on Viet Nam, both Mr. Peabody and Sherman are going to yank his demented old tail out and viciously cane him. VP hopeful Joe Leiberman(Conn. Likkud) had been saving Gramps’ bacon from gaffes, but all his butt-kissing ceased when McLUST, er, uh, vetted, yes, thoroughly vetted some candy heiress on the last seat of the Straightjacket Regress scenicruiser. Now that some gift from Big Oil for ol’Dude’s 72nd birthday is on the war party ticket as VEEP, faithful GOP support once willing to suck this one up for the Red, is going blue, Paul, Barr, home, or just far, far away in bitter disgust. So, now Team Gramps is super extra desperate, not just regular desperate. Yet, knowing all of this, twisting the news is the best plot the Ouiji Board Geniuses of Turdblossom’s Magic 8-ball Team can conjure up to turn things around for the embattled Grampie Simpson - Wilma Flinstone ticket?
Come, come! The havoc wrought by the ongoing independent Palin vetting by domestic terrorists, better known as registered American liberal and progressive voters, now almost hourly turns up a new scandal that is more detrimental to Gramps’ run than the last. Ineptly contorting information is not a reliable war tactic in Gramps’ evasion of important election issues, the sequestering of a detrimental candy heiress, and the ever useless beating of Obama’s dead horses. Like Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, the Weather Underground, ACORN, Muslims, the faked Hawaiian birth certificate, elitistism, Muslims, uppity black person out of his place, Muslims, and all the rest of the oft rode ponies listed in the Penn-Ickes Campaign Playbook that fecklessly ran HRC’s Presidential ship of hope aground onto the shores of colossal debt under palms of brand degradation. This buffoonery is not going to surgically remove the Palin Pharisee follies off the American frontal lobe from now to November. And, worst, this ruse could too easily backfire. These idiots obviously haven’t factored in the Alaska State Police potentially frog-walking the candy heiress. My fellow Americans, I solumnly swear that live coverage of a VEEP candidate’s getting frog-walked off an Arizona-plated campaign bus, cuffed and weeping, being Mirandized for abuses of only 21 months of gubernatoral power, will globally preempt a live broadcast of Dumya’s teleprompted dyslexia. Globally! “Ladies and Gentlemen, we interrupt this lame duck’s lame prattle to take you live to Alaska! The Barracuda Falls!”
This Roverian feeblemindedness is anything but a smart move. The only thing Gramps’ past screwings of the media pooch has ever brought him is the scorn of dogs offended. Team Grampers is about to learn once again that deviant media manipulation, with nothing but malicious treachery aforethought, is neither acceptable nor reliable campaign strategy. Incessant corruption of information we need to make a viable decision in the voting booth, just so the elusive ‘they’ can hang the marionette of their choice in the halls of our government, has only resulted in the sort of election malfeasance and vote tampering that ought to be prosecuted as a felony with jail time, not ignorantly abused by idiots in every election. This tactic does NOTHING to support the image Gramps is desperately trying to hijack of being the Maverick of Change.
Report thisBy cyrena, September 7, 2008 at 1:03 pm Link to this comment
By Stephen Smoliar, September 7 at 7:07 am
Thanks Stephen, for the extra illumination. I was taking a short-cut earlier, but indeed I do know.
In fact, if we really wanted to get super involved, we could go to yet another Schmitt (slightly different spelling) and that would be Carl Schmitt in his “Concept of the Political.” (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996 if you wanna check it out) It’s pretty scary, but you can listen to people like John Yoo, and see how “Schmittean” so many of these neocons are.
Still, the polical scene has so digressed, even from that day. I admit that faking it has always been ‘the way’ but I think that the past 8 years have changed absolutely everything about US politics, and we have to be able to understand how, why, and what has occurred, or we’re as good a sunk. As important as history is, it’s isn’t enough to just look back on it to explain the behavior of the US populace, we need to understand how that got us to this point. Or, we don’t stand a chance in hell of surviving.
Report thisBy Stephen Smoliar, September 7, 2008 at 8:07 am Link to this comment
A few points of contextual clarification should supplement your observations, cyrena. I assume you know The Three Rules of Politics:
1. Get elected
2. Stay elected
3. Don’t get mad, get even
Did you know that one of the sources attributed to these rules was Joseph Kennedy (as in JFK’s father)? The Democratic party has been “ONLY about winning” for at least as long as the Republicans (if not longer, since theirs is the older party)!
Having accepted that these rules are, by their very nature, bipartisan, we can now move on to the major corollary: THERE IS NO MORAL HIGH GROUND IN POLITICS. There is only the APPEARANCE of a moral high ground. The trick is to monopolize that appearance without sacrificing the Three Rules! To prove this corollary, one draws upon George Burns’ single rule of acting:
The secret to good acting is sincerity; if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
All of the major speeches from BOTH Conventions can be analyzed in terms of their capacity for successfully faking sincerity:
http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/09/at-yahoo-polls-palin.html
Once we recognize this, it is easy to accept what might be called the Fundamental Mantra of Steve Schmidt:
It’s all about manipulation.
You are quite right that reducing the entire political process to this mantra is nothing less than hubris; but check your American history and review the susceptibility of American voters (at various levels in the governmental hierarchy) to demagoguery. Karl Rove was the master student of the demagogic process and made it work to Bush’s advantage with uncanny skill:
http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/09/demagoguery-101.html
It remains to be seen whether or not Schmidt will be as effective; but he is, at the least, a master student of Rove!
Report thisBy cyrena, September 6, 2008 at 10:26 pm Link to this comment
the Bush tenets for success: relentless consistency in a combative message honed to disqualify opponents, hammered home by a campaign with clean lines of command
And this:
Its quite different, often strikingly so, sometimes alarmingly so, Todd Harris, who was an adviser to Mr. McCains 2000 campaign, said of the tone now compared with the tone then. But its important to realize that we lost in 2000, so Im not sure were in any position to give lectures about how to effectively win a national election with John McCain.
Which just goes to prove that its ONLY about winning. It has nothing to do with whats best for the country, and for the repugs, it never has.
Still, these Karl Rove taken on by his protégé are still in such stark contrast to the selection of Palin as running mate. In other words, I dont get how they can work the low road so adamantly, as the only way they can possibly win, (I would expect that) but then choose Palin. That just undoes all the dirt slinging, even if it was likely to do them any good. It didnt work for Hillary against Obama, so why do they think the same thing will work coming from the other end? I dont get that.
Even mainstream republicans arent that crazy. At least not all of them. In fact, Ive met A LOT of people in the last year or so who have ALWAYS been republicans, and are planning to vote Democrat this time, because its Obama. And that was BEFORE the Palin disaster.
So, I dont get it.
I mean, I ‘got it’ when Cheney ordered back in 2000..“Just get the oval office. I don’t care what you do, just get the oval office.” And of course I’m sure that’s still the plan. But why do they think the same shit is gonna work this time?
This is such pure hubris. It’s just accepted that we’re all stupid, and don’t know what hit us after 8 years of this crap. What else can it be other the the most cynical arrogance to do something as insane as the selection of Palin as running mate to an old geezer who’s obviously lost his own mind?
Report thisBy jackpine savage, September 6, 2008 at 8:58 pm Link to this comment
...the new tone has been jarring to some veterans of Mr. McCains presidential run in 2000 who worry that the campaign exudes a cynicism that undercuts the senators old reputation for straight talk and a more elevated style of politicking.
Just win baby…or something like that.
Will Obama perfect the delicate art of political jujitsu in time? Are the American people actually fed up with this bullshit way of electing our leadership, or do they still have a soft spot on their brain for reality television politics?
I’ve got a bad feeling about all of this…
Report this