Under what we used to call "normal" circumstances, this would be dismissed as the manic ravings of conspiracy theorists.
But folks, my dark inner spidey-sense has been seconded, thirded and tenthed by our alert viewers. Something stinks to high hell about this whole CBS controversy.
Karl Rove has shown us time and time again that there is no trick too underhanded and out of the realm of possibility that he won't try to discredit his opponent.
If you read or saw Bush's Brain, or lived in Texas around 1986, you know this story. If you didn't, READ:
LINK - In October of 1986, Rove was working for Republican Bill Clements in his race against then-Gov. Mark White. A few days before the candidates were to debate, Rove discovered a listening device that had been planted behind a needlepoint picture of an elephant hanging on his wall. The FBI investigated. Accusations and counteraccusations were made. But no charges were ever brought, and the matter slowly dissipated, amid general speculation that Rove had planted the bug himself.So you can see where an addiction was born. On to today...
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In 1986, when Rove was working for Clements, the chief spokesperson for White was an idealistic young turk named Mark McKinnon. It is "outrageous and sad that Rove would suggest the White campaign would be involved in a matter like this," McKinnon told the Austin American-Statesman at the time. Calling the bugging incident "bizarre and incredible," McKinnon said the Clements campaign was "desperate and frayed at the edges."
There's more. The bug was reportedly responsible for tipping Democrats that the Clements campaign had recently hired a Washington-based consultant, whom Rove and Clements campaign manager George Bayoud had discussed hiring over the phone shortly before the matter was mysteriously leaked. The consultant was a sometime blues guitar player renowned for his facility with attack ads and dirty tricks. His name: Lee Atwater.
Oh, one other fact about the 1986 incident stands out: Rove's candidate won that year.
CBS News ran their story on Bush's AWOL episode Wednesday night. Within hours - HOURS - the right wing party machine began the unified chant of wondering how a Microsoft Word-style proportional typeface came out of a 1972 typewriter in some of these documents. (Although if you read the entries in another of our Comments sections, IBM did in fact make a pool typewriter WITH proportional spacing, known as the "Executive". And yes, I did use one of these in college in 1973 - a real jocknocker to correct mistakes on.)
Bush's Bitches - better known as the so-called liberal media - have been proclaiming this as a potential torpedo into the Kerry campaign. Good press. Atta press. Here's your Scooby Snack.
Knowing what we do about Rove's past, can we just request that one - JUST ONE "legit" journalist ask CBS where they got those documents from - and if the path leads back to none other than Karl Rove's laptop?
The proportional-font response by the wingnuts was just a little too (here's that word again) swift and too orchestrated for believability, in my opinion.
Sorry, folks. As I said, this is not out of the realm of what this guy is capable of doing. If anyone would like to cover the bet, I'll put cold hard cash down that if these documents are in fact forgeries, this is Rove's most audacious manipulation of this or any campaign.
