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 Rove’s Science of Dirty TricksPosted on Aug 14, 2007By Amy Goodman Karl Rove’s resignation as deputy White House chief of staff cements the political future of the waning Bush administration. George W. will have little to do except wield his veto pen; he doesn’t need the steadying hand of Rove for that, or his strategic insight. As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign “in order to spend more time with family,” a retrospective of his dirty tricks might be in order. Much is attributed to Rove, dubbed “Bush’s Brain” by Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore—yet very little sticks to the man. Bearing in mind that we presume innocence until guilt is proved, read on: —In 1970, College Republican Rove stole letterhead from the Illinois Democratic campaign of Alan Dixon and used it to invite hundreds of people to Dixon’s headquarters opening, promising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing,” disrupting the event. —In 1973, Rove ran for chair of the College Republicans. He challenged the front-runner’s delegates, throwing the national convention into disarray, after which both he and his opponent, Robert Edgeworth, claimed victory. The dispute was resolved when Rove was selected through the direct order of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who at the time was none other than George H.W. Bush. —In 1986, while working for Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful William Clements, Rove claimed that Rove’s personal office had been bugged, most likely by the campaign of incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark White. Nothing was proved, but the negative press, weeks before the election, helped Rove’s man win a narrow victory. FBI agent Greg Rampton removed the bug, disrupting any attempt to properly investigate who planted it. —When Rove was an adviser for George W. Bush’s 1994 race for governor of Texas against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, a persistent whisper campaign in conservative East Texas wrongly suggested that Richards was a lesbian. According to Texas journalist Lou Dubose: “No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove. Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it. It’s a process on which he holds a patent. Identify your opponent’s strength, and attack it so relentlessly that it becomes a liability. Richards was admired because she promised and delivered a ‘government that looked more like the people of the state.’ That included the appointment of blacks, Hispanics and gays and lesbians. Rove made that asset a liability.” —After John McCain thumped George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, with 48 percent of the vote to Bush’s 30 percent, a massive smear campaign was launched in South Carolina, a key battleground. TV attack ads from third groups and anonymous fliers circulated, variously suggesting that McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam had left him mentally scarred with an uncontrollable temper, that his wife, Cindy, abused drugs, and that he had an African-American “love child.” In fact, the McCains adopted their daughter Bridget from a Bangladesh orphanage run by Mother Teresa. —According to the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Rove played a central role in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in retaliation for the accusation by her husband, Joe Wilson, that the Bush administration falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Niger. —Rove has ignored subpoenas to testify before Congress about the Justice Department scandal stemming from the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He skipped a hearing on improper use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by White House staffers that allowed them to skirt the Presidential Records Act. Rove claims he enjoys executive privilege, which travels with him as he leaves the White House.
These are but some of the dirty tricks attributed to Karl Rove. We are to believe that Rove, born Christmas Day, 1950, is retiring to write books. Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner and populist firebrand Jim Hightower describes Rove’s departure as “a rat jumping off a sinking ship.” But arch-Rove watcher Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News knows better. He notes that Rove and his wife have built a house in the Florida Panhandle—the “Republican Riviera”—and that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be 59 in 2012, a ripe age for a run for the White House. Regardless, the art and science of the political dirty tricks, learned by Rove in the Nixon years and perfected by him in the George W. Bush White House, will be with us for years to come.
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By John Hanks, Laramie, Wyoming, August 21, 2007 at 11:11 am # Amy is close to perfect, but no quite. She has turned a blind eye on 911 and on Israel’s possible role in the stunt.
By John Hanks, Laramie, Wyoming, August 20, 2007 at 9:25 pm # I’m sorry, but I just can’t see a blow job as political at all, at least until the Republicans decided to use it. I still think Monica was promised a show on Fox if she managed to seduce Clinton. Blow job? Snow job? Only an American could confuse the two.
By John Hanks, Laramie, Wyoming, August 20, 2007 at 11:40 am # Peasants love storybook crooks like Brer Rabbit. Crooks like Rove know how to exploit this weakness for entertainment. Most Americans just laugh at Rove’s political maneuvers. The problem lies in our social and cultural institutions. They are the outhouse that breeds most of the flies.
By cyrena, August 20, 2007 at 10:29 am # Louise, This pretty much wraps it up. Thanks for the inspiration. I was running out of descriptives. ..."Must just be more Dumbya/Rove style deceitful, Whhhew ...
By John Hanks, Laramie, Wyoming, August 20, 2007 at 7:35 am # Rove is a crook like so many other Republicans. He is adept at cultivating human weakness and running protection rackets.
By Alice Nuffer, August 19, 2007 at 11:13 am # Rove has taught his child these values, slime it, steal it,
By cyrena, August 16, 2007 at 8:07 am # #95386 by ldb on 8/16 at 7:09 am He is also leaveing because the investigative fires are gettting to close. If he is out of sight, he hopes the desire to fry him will deminish. ====================== This has a whole lot to do with it. Because, while the Congress as a whole may not “appear” to be doing anything to counter the continuing bullying by the shrub, there are in fact enough “public servants” within the ranks, to still be working very diligently on this. They may not be talking a whole lot about it, because this is the kind of work that they just have to do. It’s grunt work, and it takes a while, and it’s taken extra long, since the Mob has had everything locked-up and covered-up for years. So, the putting together of all of that work is tedious and time consuming, and we all want to see more immediate action of course, on SO MANY fronts. And, we should. But, we also have to keep in mind that the work is actually being done, and it’s only a matter of time, (as was with Nixon) before they have it enough in order, to bring down the whole Cabal. The gangsters know that, and that’s why we see them slipping out of sight. I would feel better if they made Rove hand over his passport, but needless to say, that would be nothing more than a little “feel-good” symbol/token action to tide me over until the real fireworks are ready to come out in a court of law. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference. You know he’ll be able to slip away if it comes to that, and we’ll end up having to hunt him down and get him extradited back. All this drama. I’ve had enough.
By johnbo, August 15, 2007 at 3:12 pm # I did some similiar research but only covered the early years of Rove’s career. It fills in a few holes you all might be interested to see: As a political operative, Karl Rove has been a criminal from his first day when, as a nineteen-year-old, he posed as a campaign worker to steal 1000 sheets of paper with the letterhead of a Democrat opponent on which he sent out disinformation that helped disrupt a rally. He gamed the Selective Service system with student deferments to avoid the draft but eventually lost his student deferment becoming 1-A, or draft-ready. Somehow, six months later, that status was change to 1-H, meaning “Deferred, aged 28 or over”. Rove was 20 at the time and never served in the military. He became the Executive Director of the College Republicans and then, with the help of dirty trickster Lee Atwater, “won” the race for National Director when, using his position as Executive Director, he and his team re-wrote the rules during the campaign for National Director and then challenged the credentials of his opponent’s delegates at the convention. The resulting contested election had to be decided by George H.W. Bush, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, who eventually awarded the position to Rove. But, not before one of Rove’s angry opponents released a tape recording to The Washington Post of several training seminars for Young Republicans where Rove discussed campaign techniques that included rooting through opponents’ garbage cans. Rove was reputed to have been involved in crimes such as identity theft, petty larceny, and campaign fraud during that period and the tapes reveal him teaching those “techniques” to College Republicans. Rove’s opponent, Robert Edgeworth, was blamed for the leak (it wasn’t him) and said he received the nastiest letter he’d ever gotten in his life from GHW Bush basically excomunicating him from the Republican party for leaking to the Washington Post. This was a shinning example of Republican values - first he was screwed over by Rove and then reamed by Bush for “leaking”. A few years later Rove was working on the 1972 campaign of Richard Nixon under the tutelage of Donald Segretti, a member of CREEP (The Committee to Re-elect the President) who ran a campaign of dirty tricks (he called it “ratfucking") for Nixon which eventually resulted in Segretti being sentenced to prison as one of the Watergate conspirators for distributing forged campaign literature. A central message from that campaign that Rove helped disseminate was that Nixon’s opponent, Senator George McGovern, was a dangerous “left-wing peacenik” despite McGovern’s stint in WWII as a bomber pilot. That attack was similar to attacks Rove drummed up years later challenging Senator John Kerry’s war record while again working for and surrounded by people who, like himself, had avoided military service in the Viet Nam War. Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, who was implicated in the Watergate break-in and became the star witness for the prosecution, has been quoted as saying that “Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove’s activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him.” Rove’s style has always been to laugh at legality. You can achieve many victories when you cheat and Rove hijacking the Justice Department to help steal elections for Republicans is just the latest example. It amazes me that people attribute “genius” to someone who is nothing more than an unscrupulous thug or miss the hypocrisy of someone like Rove working for an Administration that pretends to represent “family values”.
By GB, August 15, 2007 at 2:53 pm # D. Katz,
By Peter, August 15, 2007 at 1:50 pm # Many thought that the failed presidency of Bush 41 had damaged the brand forever. Many now think that Bush 43 has damaged the brand beyond repair. But if Jeb wants to run, and the MSM won’t discuss his many scandals...S&L;, crooked voting machines, other patronage, then we will have Bush 45, especially with Rove behind the scenes. It’s a very horrifying thought, but well within the bounds of possibility. This all if Rove and Bush haven’t destroyed the Republican party as a viable operation, which may be evident in the next election.
By tothehague, August 15, 2007 at 1:44 pm # Isn’t it Paraguay where GW has bought all that property to run off to so he can avoid the gallows?
By Chris, August 15, 2007 at 1:41 pm # It’s a pity that he couldn’t be put behind the bars given the above and I hope investigations stay open to get some credible evidence to hold hime accountable, with passing time.
By carl c., August 15, 2007 at 1:30 pm # This slime should crawl back under the rock from which he came and stay there. We have no need for liars, cheaters, thieves and ##%$& in our political system.
By cyrena, August 15, 2007 at 9:59 am # I noticed a bunch of good comments on this. Lots of extra info into the tricks and scams that were too much to include in one article. Verne’s comment lead me to consider though, about whether or not Rove really has been the Shrub’s “brain”, since he’s giving him credit for having HIRED all of these folks to surround himself with, and it’s worked, so maybe the shrub isn’t so dumb after all. Now Verne, while I can certainly appreciate that very important point in most cases, I’m not sure it applies here. I don’t think that Rove is as much the Shrub’s brain, as he is the Republican Party’s Fixer and organizer. He and the Shrub may have started out as childhood sweethearts, but it would have been Rove that was smart enough to use the Shrub as the symbolic “mascot”, for carrying out the deeds, once he was “officially” in place. Now of course that’s just a thought. I give anybody a whole lot of credit for trying to find a way to make the Shrub appear like he might not be a total moron. But at the end of the day...he still is. Meantime, here’s an interesting piece. It was OUR $1.6 billion that Karl el al used to lie to us, and brainwash the world.
By BG Pelaire, August 15, 2007 at 9:31 am # Amy, you forgot Rove’s “crushing” former Governor Don Sigelman in Alabama with trumped-up charges, a crooked judge and prosecutors, and Rove’s personal handling of the situation. It’s classic Rove, and part of the huge attempt to politicize the Justice system to keep Republicans (and the military-industrial complex) in perpetual power.
By Robert, August 15, 2007 at 8:29 am # D. Katz, 5 years ago I would’ve never agreed w/ you and told you to stop exaggerating. I agree w/ you 100% now. The Republican party is truly the scum of the U.S. Its political reps (the PIGS)have proved it true time and again.
By D. Katz, August 14, 2007 at 11:12 pm # Those who blame Rove for the utter disaster that is the Bush - no, make that the Cheney Administration and the corrupt excesses of the Republican party have it completely ass backwards. Rove is not the architect, he is the building; white, fat and smug, he embodies and exemplifies the highest values of the Republican Party, which are: no values, other then getting elected, feeding at the trough, screwing the public, and looking out for the rich, big business, and of course, number one. All that blather about family values: abortion, the sanctity of marriage, prayer in public schools, yadda yadda, is just that, blather and carefully contrived PR BS specifically designed to fool the rubes, the credulous, the idiots of the religious right and the patriotic yahoos into voting for the same greedy fiends who are exporting their jobs, denying them health care, and making college unaffordable while tracking their kids into a substandard education. Just keep drinking beer, breathing dirty air, eating tainted food from your outsourced factories in China; keep listeing to oxyconten addict Rush Limbaugh, and the Fox Propaganda Network, keep on driving gas gussling SUV’s, and cheering on your favorite NASCAR driver, while we get rich - that’s the GOP philosophy. Republicans have no loyalty to this country or its people, who they play for suckers (especially the religious right, who are happy to let them), they hate minorities, and only tolerate them to get elected, or as useful idiots; in general, Republicans have no values other than greed and selfishness, and no ethics or morality whatsoever. They will slander anyone, say or do anything, take any position, break any promise as long as it serves their objectives. We see time and time again how they arrogantly apply one set of ethics for themselves and another, more rigid and unyielding, for their advesaries and the “lesser people.” Republicans are liars, hypocrites, and thieves; murderers too; ruthless people who will stop at nothing to gain and hold power. They belong in jail, not government. In the sixties we used to have a word for these people: the word was PIGS: they want all the land, all the money, all the oil, all the water, all the air. To sum it all up Republicans are SCUM, each and every one of them, and Rove is no scummier than the rest. Throw them all out, (if we ever have another honest election) investigate their crimes, try them, then throw them all in jail - where they belong.
By republicanSScareme, August 14, 2007 at 10:38 pm # Why is it so many of these sleaze-bags look like church deacons? Fat, pathetic church deacons. His departure sounds great, but now who’s going to take care of that madman in Room 1600? Maybe Laurina will start running things.
By Kevin, August 14, 2007 at 7:50 pm # Yes kids, learn from this. Cheating gets you everything. When lying, cheating and manipulation works, is there still a chance for this society to recover? Add Your Comment |
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Kennedy Recovering From Seizure
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