Rove previews the attack on Obama

Karl Rove writing for the Wall Street Journal, offers an "analysis" of the results of the New Hampshire primary that contains elements of the pending attacks on Obama. Josh Marshall highlights the racial stereotyps that Karl deftly drops into what pretends to be analysis:

in the course of a single column Rove manages to flag Obama's "trash talking", "his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard", and the alleged fact that "he is often lazy."

Then Karl deftly attacks Obama, first describing what he tried to do, then explaining why he failed.

while Mr. Obama can draw on the deep doubts of many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton, he can't close out the argument. Mr. Obama is an inspiring figure playing a historical role, but that's not enough to push aside the former First Lady and senator from New York. She's an historic figure, too. When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.

Mr. Obama began to find his voice at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, when he took four deliberate swipes at the Clintons. He called for Democrats to tackle problems "that had festered long before" President Bush, "problems that we've talked about year after year after year after year."

He dismissed the Clinton style of campaigning and governing, saying "Triangulating and poll-driven positions . . . just won't do." He attacked Mrs. Clinton on Iraq, torture and her opposition to direct presidential talks with Syria and Iran. Then he rejected a new Clinton era by saying, "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s." It deftly, if often indirectly, played on the deep concerns of Democrats who look at the Clinton era as a time of decline for their party and unfulfilled potential for their cause.

But rather than sharpen and build on this message of contrast and change, Mr. Obama chose soaring rhetoric and inspirational rallies. While his speeches galvanized true believers at his events, his words were neither filling nor sustaining for New Hampshire Democrats concerned about the Clintons and looking for a substantive alternative.

And Mr. Obama, in his own way, is often as calculating as Mrs. Clinton. For example, he was the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to use a teleprompter to deliver his Iowa and New Hampshire election-night speeches. It gave his speeches a quality and clarity that other candidates, speaking from notes or the heart, failed to achieve. But what he gained in polish, he lost in connection.

Like all good propaganda, there is truth in what Karl says. But this also lays out the framework, at least in part, for the Republican attack on Obama should he win the Democratic nomination for President.

I had thought until the New Hampshire Primary that the nominations of each party would be clear after the massive primary fiesta that will happen February 5th, but listening to how the various candidate are having to triage which states they can win with little effort and don't need to spend money on, which states they cannot win and don't need to spend money on, and then planning the advertising spending for the ones that are left, I no longer think that the answers will be presented that soon. But they will be known by the middle of March. That's still only about ten weeks away.

After that the uncontrolled 527 organizations will know which Democrat to attack. And they will. The push polls by Huckabee supporters against Mitt Romney have already started in Michigan, (Republican primary in five days) and by Mitt Romney in South Carolina against Huckabee (or maybe vice versa), since the Republican primary there is only nine days from now. John McCain was apparently a target of push polls in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney has reported that he has been a target of push polls in South Carolina, allegedly from Huckabee supporters. Fred Thompson reports that pro-Huckabee push polling has occurred in South Carolina.

I haven't found anything in the first four Google pages about push polling in the Democratic races. This is a republican phenomenon, and so far all their targets are internal to the Party. When the primaries are resolved, all those Republican dirty tricks will be aimed at Democrats. Plan on it.

See my prior posts

• And while we are discussing nasty politics...
  January 04, 2008


• 2008 will be the nastiest election in memory
  January 01, 2008