Matt Taibbi: "McCain surrendered to political fearmonger who smeared him out of 2000 race" (ROVE)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

The Return of Rove
John McCain has surrendered his campaign to the same political fearmonger who smeared him out of the race in 2000

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Oct 16, 2008 7:15 AM

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23482821/the_return_of_rove



Wayne Slater has known Karl Rove for 20 years. As the author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, he's not easily shocked by the Republican strategist's Gila-monstroid tactics. But even he's been blown away by Rove's latest political comeback.

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, Slater watched Rove address a delegation from South Carolina on John McCain's behalf. That would be the same South Carolina where Rove helped torpedo McCain's campaign in 2000 by reportedly spreading rumors that the candidate's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually his illegitimate black love child. Addressing the convention delegates, though, Rove acted like McCain's long-lost friend.

"Karl started talking in this emotional tone about how wonderful Cindy McCain was to adopt Bridget — eight years after he just took a machine gun to the guy," Slater says in an awed voice. "He's incredible."

He sure is. Ever since the nomination of Sarah Palin, Washington has been abuzz with rumors that Rove has been invited to help plot campaign strategy for McCain. His rise from the ashes is the scariest story of an already scary campaign season. Presidents come and go; they sit in a place where the law can still touch them, and they're subject to the vote once every four years. But Karl Rove is a revolutionary, a man who can't be stopped by anything except death and maybe — maybe — prison. Rove is trying to finish the work of Nixon and Bush: to achieve the supremacy of a peculiarly American form of Leninism, one that involves the drowning of the electoral process in idiot witch hunts and dirty tricks, the handing over of all policy to anyone with a dollar more than the next guy, and the total aggrandizement of incumbent power at the expense of an entire system of checks and balances. With Rove back in the mix, there's now a hell of a lot more at stake this November than there was when a batty, battle-scarred old poll-chaser like John McCain was the darkest figure on the ticket. Not to sound too alarmist, but Election Day now becomes a referendum on democracy itself.

The actual evidence of Rove's newfound influence on the McCain campaign is — like so much of the history surrounding this uniquely maddening personage — scant at best, part vapor and part legend, a thing mostly deduced and inferred from various factoids and ripples in the informational pool.

We know, for instance, that Steven Schmidt, who was tapped to be head of rapid response during Bush's 2004 campaign, is now a senior strategist in the McCain camp. Schmidt assumed a more central role in McCain's run in June, shortly after the stammering, much-mocked "green screen" speech McCain gave near New Orleans on the night Obama claimed victory in the Democratic primaries. This promotion would put to the test a theory that Rove has trained so many subordinates in his tactics that his revolution could go on forever even without him.

[Hope And Change]

1. Sad but true.

[OneGrassRoot]

2. Yep, this is why I say "family values, my ass"

Both McCain and Palin have thrown their kids under the Straight Talk Express. That was the first bump in the road causing the wheels to come off.

McCain not only pandered to the people who attacked his child in 2000, he now has one of them on the ticket with them. And Palin, well, aside from giving her pregnant daughter no warning that she was going to be thrust into the global spotlight, she seems to regularly throw her own kids under the bus for her own personal gain.

[Essene]

3. hah. i love when the "surrender" rhetoric is thrown back at Mccain

[Orsino]

4. McCain only knows how to surrender.

Whether it is to big contributors, overpowered presidents or his own ego, McCain blows with the prevailing wind. It may have been decades since he took a genuinely courageous stance.