With all the great OP (
Opening
Post, to help newbys) titles available for this thread on
DICK WADHAMS, I have, as usual, used the worst. It really doesn't matter. Here's not only my original source but also the place I'd like to see get some kicks and votes:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2900228That thread sent me on a quest for pictures of Dick Wadhams, where I learned this:
Dick Wadhams: Karl Rove's heir apparent.By Alexandra Starr
Posted Friday, June 10, 2005, at 7:30 AM ET
Is this Dick the next Rove?
John Thune's 2004 challenge to former Sen. Tom Daschle looked a little like a kamikaze mission. Two years previously, Thune had lost to Sen. Tim Johnson, another South Dakota Democrat who is a far less impressive campaigner than the former minority leader, in a year when Republicans racked up victories nationwide. But for his race against Daschle, Thune heeded the advice of the Bush White House, dumped his first campaign team, and hired Dick Wadhams. The 49-year-old operative comes across as an aging country boy, but he is renowned for running nasty and effective campaigns. In South Dakota he honed his slash-and-burn reputation, relentlessly attacking Daschle about his Washington, D.C., home, luxury car, and lobbyist wife. At one point, Wadhams accused the former minority leader of having "emboldened Saddam Hussein." Thune won, by a slim margin, and gratefully dubbed his campaign manager "the best pit bull out there."
Rove may have figured that recommending Wadhams for the South Dakota race would be the next best thing to taking Daschle down himself.
The two operatives, who have known each other since their days in College Republicans, run similar campaigns. Both shield their candidates from the press. Both like to work with clients who may not be powerhouse political talents, but who sell well as regular guys and thrive on being underestimated. And both win, a lot. In addition to engineering President Bush's election and re-election, Rove masterminded the GOP's 1998 sweep of every elected statewide office in Texas. Wadhams has lost only one of the nine statewide campaigns he has worked on. Now that Rove's tenure as pre-eminent consigliere is drawing to a close—at a press breakfast shortly after the November 2004 election, he said he wouldn't run another presidential campaign—Wadhams is emerging as his most obvious successor.
http://www.slate.com/id/2120558/ In my quest for a picture, I found these two by
ONLY TYPING DICK WADHAMS NAME into a google graphics search:
Dick Wadhams
OTHER GRAPHIC
AVAILABLE BY
SEARCHING FOR
DICK WADHAMS'
PHOTO All kidding aside, the similarity is truly striking. Both images resize, EXACTLY THE SAME, when transfered to a server like photobucket, which may mean nothing to the average reader but to an old-hand at posting graphics the phenomenon is incredible, because it defies the law of averages.
IS THIS A ROVE-LIKE ATTEMPT TO FOCUS ATTENTION AWAY FROM A HOTLY CONTESTED RACE, WHERE FOCUS SHOULD REMAIN ON ISSUES BECAUSE ALLEN OBVIOUSLY CAN'T COMPETE WITH WEBB?like I said, don't vote my OP up because these graphics appear to be a trap to direct attention away from a major-league loser in a VERY IMPORTANT race, where BOTH parties have spent plenty.