{"id":7385,"date":"2006-05-11T13:51:57","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T17:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7385"},"modified":"2006-05-11T13:51:57","modified_gmt":"2006-05-11T17:51:57","slug":"karl-roves-apocalypse-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/karl-roves-apocalypse-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Rove’s ‘apocalypse strategy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that he’s given up all those pesky policy responsibilities, [tag]Karl Rove[\/tag], assuming he’s not indicted<\/a>, is turning his attention on the midterm elections. Or, more accurately, what he’s going to do to smear as many Dems<\/a> as humanly possible during the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

This fall’s election season is going to make the past three look like episodes of “Barney.”<\/p>\n

The conventional notion here is that Democrats want to “nationalize” the 2006 elections — dwelling on broad themes (that is, the failures of the Bush administration) — while the Republicans will try to “localize” them as individual contests that have nothing to do with, ahem, the goings-on in the capital.<\/p>\n

That was before the [tag]GOP[\/tag] situation got so desperate. The way I read the recent moves of Karl Rove & Co., they are preparing to wage war the only way open to them: not by touting George Bush, Lord knows, but by waging a national campaign to paint a nightmarish picture of what a [tag]Democrat[\/tag]ic [tag]Congress[\/tag] would look like, and to portray that possibility, in turn, as prelude to the even more nightmarish scenario: the return of a Democrat (Hillary) to the White House.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Newsweek’s [tag]Howard Fineman[\/tag] added that the GOP’s money will be poured not into defending Republicans or touting a conservative agenda, but rather into “painting [tag]Democrats[\/tag] as the party of tax increases, gay marriage, secularism and military weakness.”<\/p>\n

In other words, desperate [tag]Republicans[\/tag] are going to go negative and aim to eke out a victory through fear and smear. What a shock.<\/p>\n

As Digby asked<\/a>, “Can someone please tell me how this differs from any Republican campaign of the last 25 years?” Exactly. Does any serious person believe the GOP plans to approach the election cycle as one of substantive policy differences? High-minded debate?<\/p>\n

Please. We’re talking about a party that sent out official direct mail from the [tag]RNC[\/tag] in 2004 suggesting that Democrats wanted to ban the Bible<\/a> in Arkansas and West Virginia. It’s the same party that compared Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden<\/a> in 2002 and mocked injured troops’ Purple Hearts<\/a> during the Republican National Convention.<\/p>\n

Fineman suggests Rove will pull out all the stops to implement an “apocalypse strategy.” The implication is [tag]Rove[\/tag] is capable of something different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that he’s given up all those pesky policy responsibilities, [tag]Karl Rove[\/tag], assuming he’s not indicted, is turning his attention on the midterm elections. Or, more accurately, what he’s going to do to smear as many Dems as humanly possible during the midterm elections. This fall’s election season is going to make the past three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}