We will never be able to out-do the Rove machine in hate and divisiveness.

madfloridian

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Mon Sep-08-08 03:27 PM
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We will never be able to out-do the Rove machine in hate and divisiveness.

We just can't do it as a party. We don't have the internal hate and contempt that have been bred into the GOP by Gingrich and Rove for the last few decades.

Those here who are calling out Obama for not running a smear machine like McCain and Palin are doing are often those who are carrying a torch for their candidate who did not win in the primaries. The time for catharsis is over. Their former candidate is working for Obama graciously. There is still harm done in my state from the primaries, and we might lose because of it. But surface efforts are being made.

There is no way a team like Obama/Biden can act anywhere near like that hateful old man named McCain. I don't want them to do so either.

I don't want our party taking on the characteristic of that Rovian Republican party. They reward those who are corrupt in nature, they actually gloat when they refuse to answer congressional subpoenas. This GOP under Tom DeLay and Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich have no soul and no conscience.

The media gives them a pass. Even MSNBC is cowardly now. They are afraid of the right wing hate machine. And it is quite powerful.

Some here think we should build our own hate machine. I don't. I don't think it is in the nature of Barack Obama or Joe Biden to do that. They are decent good men, and they should continue to act that way.

There are ways to win without that, and I think Obama and Biden are working to do that. In many instances they are bypassing the media and building their campaign on the ground.

The Rove Machine is running the John McCain campaign. McCain is 72 years old, tired and old...and he is letting them do it. He doesn't have that much fight left. So he is now the pathetic McCain of 2008 instead of the fighting one in 2000.

"The Rise of the Rovians" ....Rove man in charge of McCain's campaign since July 2

New chief Steve Schmidt, right, a veteran of the Bush campaign, will focus on honing McCain's message. Republicans have complained the campaign lacked clear themes.

...."The elevation of Steve Schmidt -- who worked closely with Karl Rove -- at McCain's headquarters represented a sharp diminishment of the responsibilities of Rick Davis, who has been McCain's campaign manager since the last shake-up nearly a year ago.

The move is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Rove's shop in the McCain operation. Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for Bush in the 2004 campaign (and in his White House) has joined the campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with McCain every other week. Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Rove's operation who is a former Fox News producer and director of presidential advance in the Bush White House, was hired by Schmidt last week after a series of what McCain's advisers acknowledged were poorly executed campaign events."

More on Rove's control of the campaign from Wayne Slater:

The conventional wisdom is that Karl Rove ripped his britches in 2006, when massive GOP losses upended his hopes of an enduring Republican majority. Rove himself has denied he's an adviser this year to the McCain campaign. He downplays his conversations with Team McCain as merely "chit-chat." But yesterday's shakeup in the McCain camp suggests the Rovians are on the ascendance.

Political strategist Steve Schmidt in now in charge of daily operations. He's a Rove prot�g�, and his elevation is evidence of increasing influence of Rove-trained operatives in the McCain camp. White House and Bush campaign veteran Nicolle Wallace has joined Team McCain as a senior adviser. And yesterday's shakeup has put the unflappable Greg Jenkins, Bush's highly regarded political advance man, joining the communications effort.

Obama and Biden have qualities John McCain and Sarah Palin do not have.

They have class, integrity, and a true sense of honor and patriotism.

We are not going to out-Rove the GOP. They have it down pat...the hate, the vitriol.

We have to win another way. We will never be able to use the tactics of hate and humiliation like they do.

Graphics courtesy of Salon.com

Here is what they do. They use "Controlled controversy -- making your point in a manner so bombastic that your opponents blow their cool -- is a Blackwell specialty. Before the 2004 Republican Convention, the conservative elder personally went to a drugstore and bought little pink heart stickers, bandages and purple nail polish. At home, he made the "Purple Heart Band-Aids" that he later distributed in Madison Square Garden to mock John Kerry's war wounds. From Blackwell's perspective, the Kerry camp's outrage at the gag was a tactical disaster. Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, Blackwell says, kept the story alive for days by "running around like a chicken with its head cut off."

We have an outstanding nominees. We should work locally for them and support them.

It is not their nature to be as ugly and nasty as the McCain campaign. I don't want them to be that either.