DNC: Rove Can Recycle Political Attacks, But Still Not A Plan for Success

[madfloridian]

DNC team still going after Karl Rove...

http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/06/rove_can_recycl.php

Rove Can Recycle Old Political Attacks, But That's Still Not A Plan for Success

"White House Deputy Chief of Staff and top political strategist Karl Rove tipped his party's hand last night. At a fundraiser in Manchester, NH, Rove made clear that Republicans who are desperate in the face of plummeting approval ratings this Election Year will fall back on the standard GOP tactic of launching misleading political attacks against their opponents instead of offering a real plan for success in Iraq.

According to the Washington Post, Rove told a partisan Republican crowd that Democrats "may be with you for the first shots. But they're not going . . . to be with you for the tough battles." He also implied that if Democrats were in control, Iraq would fall to terrorists and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not have been killed. Rove said, "When it gets tough, and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party's old pattern of cutting and running."

Rove's baseless partisan attack on Democrats echoes earlier Election Year smear campaigns against Democrats by leading Republicans like Vice President Cheney. During the 2004 election, Cheney said that if the President lost the election, "the danger is that we'll get hit again." Cheney also questioned Senator Kerry's patriotism, asserting that had he been President the "Soviet Union would still be in business" and "Saddam Hussein might well control the Persian Gulf today."

"Karl Rove and the Republicans in Washington are running scared this year," said Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Stacie Paxton. "The American people know that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have failed to come up with a real plan for success in Iraq, so Rove Republicans are recycling their tired and despicable partisan attacks. That is not going to be enough to rescue their troubled electoral prospects this year. The American people don't want political attacks, they want real solutions. Together, America can do better."

[madfloridian]

1. More: Not Even Rove Can Rescue New Hampshire Republicans

http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/06/not_even_rove_c.php

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove is in Manchester today trying to bail out a New Hampshire Republican Party that has been virtually bankrupted by legal fees stemming from the criminal conspiracy to keep people from voting on Election Day in 2002. Rove will headline a state party fundraising dinner tonight, just weeks after news reports revealed that legal bills stemming from the phone-jamming case had left the party with just $733.60 in its bank accounts.

Rove's visit comes days after lawyers for the Democratic National Committee and the New Hampshire Democratic Party asked a state court to permit them to depose leading national and New Hampshire Republicans. Rove's visit also follows a revealing profile of convicted phone-jammer Allen Raymond in this weekend's Boston Globe, in which Raymond called the criminal conspiracy to disenfranchise voters "part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters." Raymond cited other examples of those tactics, including "recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race."

"It is fitting that one of the main architects of the Republican Party's win at all cost mentality would come to Manchester to try to rescue the New Hampshire Republican Party, which has been virtually bankrupted by a criminal conspiracy to disenfranchise New Hampshire voters," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera. "Instead of bailing out a state party that has helped bankroll the Republican stonewall in this case, Washington Republicans should be answering critical questions about who at the White House and the Republican National Committee knew about this conspiracy and when they knew it.

"The time has come for the White House and the RNC to stop stonewalling on this case, stop supporting New Hampshire Republicans who participated in this scheme, and finally join Democrats in fighting to protect the right of every American to vote and have that vote counted."