Friday, October 15, 2004

Bush's non-Christian helper

For someone who claims to be a Christian, George W. Bush's hews awfully close to a demonstrably non-Christian slimeball, Karl Rove. Rove spends more time with Bush than practically anyone, and Rove does not act like Christ in any way.

Really good article in The Atlantic by Joshua Green. It's now available for free on the web and I recommend that everyone read it. Rove works for Bush,and Bush will probably order Rove to be as slimy as Rove can be. After all,
Here is some of the choice Karl Rove sliminess from the above article which apparently, despite lying and immoral behavior, Bush supports:

Here's sampler of Rove tactics from the Atlantic article. We've seen some of them in this election already, and some are sure to come.
  • Rove: "undermine the other side's support by casting them as liars, cheaters, stealers, immoral -- all of that."
  • "the campaign spread tales of poll watchers threatened with arrest; probate judges locking themselves in their offices and refusing to admit campaign workers; votes being cast in absentia for comatose nursing-home patients, and Democrats caught in a cemetary writing down the names of the dead in order to put them on absentee ballots."
  • "the last marching order we had from Karl [Rove]," says a former employee, "was 'make sure you continue to talk this up. The only way we're going to be successful is if the Alabama public continues to care about it."
  • "As if to remind Al Gore's campaign of Rove's skill when faced with a recount, the case was revived in a flurry of legal briefs in the Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore -- including one filed by the State of Alabama on behalf of George W. Bush.


  • Quoting Napoleon, the [Rove] memo says, "The whole art of war consists of a well-reasoned and extremely circumpsect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack."

  • "Among Rove's other innovations was a savvy use of language, developed for speaking to the judicial base about judicial races. Candidates were to attack 'liberal activist judges' and to present themselves as 'people who will strictly interpret the law and not rewrite it from the bench.' "
  • "... Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed up -- absent any trace of who was behind them -- viciously attacking See and his family. 'We were tryint to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people,' the staffer says. ' You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that does not have your tags.'

  • Whisper campaigns [Riffle: whisper campaigns are easily run nationally now via Drudge. Drudge will post anything Rove wants him to.]
  • "The 2000 primary campaign, for example, featured a widely disseminated rumor that John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had betrayed his country under interrogation and been rendered mentally unfit for office."
  • "More often a Rove campaign questions an opponent's sexual orientation. Bush's 1994 race against Ann Richards featured a rumor she was a lesbian, along with a rare instance of such a tactic's making it into the public record..."
  • "Rove spread a rumor that Weaver had made a pass at a young man at a state Republican function."
  • "'We were trying to counter the positives from that ad [showing Kennedy as helping children],' a former Rover staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile.'"
There you go. The "Christian" president George W. Bush, hires a political consultant who starts whisper campaigns against opponents, calling them pedophiles and homosexuals when the Rove/Bush campaign knows it is not true. That, of course, is bearing false witness. I guess Bush feels that breaking one of the Ten Commandments is something he can live with, while fighting an election on the issues is something he cannot do.

Some of the above we're seeing right now in this election: in the face of specific and substantiated evidence of Republicans trying to disenfranchise voters, Bush's RNC replies with unspecified claims of Democratic "registration fraud."

Let's see what other wretched tactics Bush and Rove can come up with in the remaining weeks. Let's not hold our breath that the media will call them on it.

No comments:

Web Analytics