Somebody (spelled R-O-V-E) knows exactly what they're doing letting the pregnancy thing play out

[DFW]

It draws plenty of attention away from more pertinent corruption and competency
questions the Republicans would rather not be addressed. Obama gets it. The MSM
is playing along, as is, apparently much of the blogosphere. The pregnancy thing,
until some major lie is uncovered (and it may well not be), makes us look as bad
as the Republicans did with Monica Lewinsky. The right wing will have a load of
sympathy to draw on whereas if corruption and incompetence are brought to the
forefront, their defense starts to crumble. I'd love to see a headline somewhere
saying "Palin knows nothing about American history" instead of all the personal
stuff. Plenty of Republican voters go through the same struggles with trying to
reconcile personal right-wing views with their own inability to live up to them.

Go after the incompetence and the corruption, and she goes down. Go after the
personal stuff, and we may not go down, but we'll get a backlash we don't need.
Let the tabloids do it, it's their forte. They are out to sell their rags. They'll
do it, fear not.

As it is, my bet is that Rove is watching to see how this plays out, and in a week,
figures Palin is strengthened enough to ride out the storm, or decides she has
served her purpose (i.e. distracted from the RNConvention enough so that no one
remembers it was a non-event), and then McCain can go back to getting a VP he can
live with, and not have to be exposed as long as he would have been under normal
circumstances.

As in poker, if you have a weak hand, you conceal it as long as you can and hope no
one gets wise to it. McPalin is one weak hand, indeed.

[Forkboy]

1. .....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6862712&mesg_id=6862712

[C_U_L8R]

2. Or you fold

or in the Republican's case, you crumble

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. Stop deifying Rove

He's a fucking moron. The key term in "Mayberry Machiavelli" is MAYBERRY, not Machievelli, for Christ's sake.

He's not some all-powerful, do no wrong guy. The less you make him out to be that, the less you'll be victimized.

[DFW]

14. Underestimating him is foolish in my mind

That got us Bush in 2000, a right wing congress in 2002, and re-Bush in 2004.
Just ask Don Siegelman.

I'll stop paying attention to him when he's retired with Dick Cheney in some
extradition-proof corner of the UAE. He LOOKS like a moron. An atomic bomb LOOKS
like the last place entry to a sculpture contest, too.

[gblady]

4. they say...

Obama is a great poker player...

[iamjoy]

5. Why The Pregnancy Matters

I've defended Bristol from some of the comments here. I think it is a legit issue, but we tneed to be careful how we handle it.

The reason it is relevant is that Palin has been (and I believe remains) a proponent of abstinence only when it comes to sex education.

So, we have a girl from a good family with loving parents who reinforce the message provided in school to wait until marriage to have sex. My question is: if this girl had sex, what makes the social conservatives think that kids from less involved parents are going to heed the abstinence only message promoted in school?

My second question is, why is the father marrying her? Do people really do that sort of thing anymore? I mean, he's what 17, 18 himself? Did Sarah Palin in anyway use the power of her office to intimidate this young man into "doing the right thing" for her daughter? I genuinely don't know on that one. If there was no pressure, I would have to applaud Bristol and the baby's father for doing the right thing.

[Mike Daniels]

7. The only safe way of approaching the pregnancy is through the abstinence angle

Pretty much the way you described it above.

I don't think even making this a matter of choice/anti-choice works because the framing re: this pregnancy will clearly be drawn as keeping an "inconvenience" vs. aborting an "inconvenience".

[NashVegas]

12. Palin - The Pro-Teen Pregnancy Candidate

[yellowdogintexas]

6. Obama DOES get it. I think he always gets it, which is why I chose him over

the other Dem contenders. However the pregnancy/was she or wasn't she/lack of judgement over her own medical care items are keeping this whole thing very alive, allowing other things to come to the surface.

Obama is reputed to be a very good chess player and a good poker player...not a combination to trifle with IMHO.

[TheZug]

8. Rove is so far up so many people's asses here that they're afraid to do anything.

AIP is coming.

More stuff is coming.

Calm down.

[ClarkUSA]

9. Nonsense. Rove told the Maine delegation yesterday that Palin was "a risky choice."

Rove is out of the loop -- he, like the rest of BushCo, was pushing HARD for Romney.

[SoFlaJet]

10. This Karl Rove as the democratic party's boogie man

thing is really getting old. The guy is no genius strategist he's good at 2 things stealing elections and cheating. He WILL be in a federal penitentiary sometime soon

[myrna minx]

15. I am so sick of Rove being the omnipresent, evil genius boogie man everyone is terrified of. .

Don't get me wrong, Rove is an evil dirty trickster, but he's no genius. Our worst enemy, is our attribution to Rove of absolutely everything: good, bad or otherwise. McCain's campaign is the Hindenburg, and while this thing is far from being over, Rove loves the "fear" he strikes in Dems, without having to do anything. :eyes: If anyone thinks this Palin fiasco is some triple super secret Rove whammy, they are quite mistaken. Why on earth would the Republicans want to march into their Convention with this kind of chaos?

[SoFlaJet]

17. my theory Myna?

They don't really want to win the presidency. They NEED the democrats to build up the treasury again so they can get back to stealing it AGAIN in 8 years.

[cali]

11. wow. you couldn't be more wrong. and rove is a two bit hack

not a political genius. he blew it but big in 2006. he was lucky, not some brilliant guy.

The pregnant daughter story is a huge blow. It's not what a campaign wants during their convention, no matter how they spin it. The McCain camp is failing at damage control. their convention is a cluster fuck. Obama is rising in all the polls. And the other stuff about Palin is filtering into the MSM.

[SmokingJacket]

13. The pregnancy only has a day or two of legs, anyway.

If she's still around after that, other stuff will come up.

[bdamomma]

16. This is only a distraction story from Rove

to keep the public uninformed about Cheney's trip out to Georgia. When Cheney travels trouble follows.