Typical Rove operation. See:
<snip>
One thing that is also clear, is that Rove uses almost identical tactics in every close race he is in, including and especially the current one: he manipulates the media to get free exposure for fictitious claims (Swifties), goes negative early and often attacking his opponents on their perceived strengths - showing no reluctance to assault the service of veterans (Swifties, flip-flopper, "liberal", etc.), he will cast his opponents as homosexuals (effete, French looking, Fox News quotes, etc.) and he will use surrogates to do most of the dirty work (all of the above). This takes me to the final tactic employed by Rove: he feigns an outrageous attack on his own candidate in order to paint his opponent in a negative light and/or distract the electorate from a pertinent topic in the news.
A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove's client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed up-absent any trace of who was behind them-viciously attacking See and his family. "We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people," the staffer says. "You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags.' So I borrowed a buddy's car
down the middle of the street - I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I'd cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees." The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order "to create a backlash against the Democrat," as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. "They just beat you down to your knees," Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove's attacks. See won the race.
So Karl Rove initiated a campaign to attack his own candidate in order to discredit his opponent. Shocking? Yes. A one time affair? Not exactly. Rove also partook in a similar bit of chicanery during the closely contested 1986 Texas governor's race, "in which his candidate and mentor, the Republican oilman Bill Clements, sought to oust the Democratic incumbent Mark White." During this infamous chapter of Rovian campaigning, Rove bugged his office (though he has never acknowledged the fact) and then announced, innocently enough, that his office was bugged on the same day as "an evening debate in which his candidate was expected to fare poorly." Rove made White's camp look unethical, as if they were guilty of bugging his offices, and then used the revelation of such a "crime" to obscure the events of that night - which would have hurt his own candidate's prospects. Needless to say, Rove's candidate won.
Having seen Rove's penchant for pattern and repetition, does this tactic look familiar? While I have no proof to this effect, and what I am about to say is pure speculation (albeit based on Rove's extensive record), I think there is a good chance that the forged memos that CBS quoted from in a piece on Bush's National Guard service originated from Karl Rove. Before you dismiss this as the wild ravings of a conspiracy theorist, consider a few points.
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More here:
http://tianews.blogspot.com/2004/10/dark-side-of-karl-rove.html
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