Steve Schmidt - the new Karl Rove?

[AZBlue]

I'm sure many of you received the e-mails and/or read the comments by David Plouffe comparing McCain's latest dirty tactics to Rove. I believe Plouffe's exact words on a conference call were, "This is not the John McCain voters thought they would be seeing in this presidential campaign. "He's not just embracing the Rove playbook that people really are tired of, he's taking it to a further extreme."

Reading a CNN article on the McCain atrocities I noticed this comment at its very end: "Rove has no official role with the McCain campaign, though Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser in charge of the day-to-day message, was a longtime protégé of Rove's."

So, who is Steve Schmidt?

• Communications director for Senate campaign of Matt Fong in 1998
  
• Chief strategist in charge of Supreme Court nominations of Samuel A. Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts
  
• Counselor and spokesman for Vice President Dick Cheney
  
• Ran the rapid-response media operation for Bush's re-election campaign in 2004
  
• Traveled to Iraq for a month in 2005 to create the Bush administration's communication strategy
  
• Campaign Manager for re-election campaign of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006
  
• Partner at Mercury Public Affairs, the firm that hired Tim Griffin, one of the U.S. attorneys whose jobs were created by the unlawful firing of 9 prosecutors by the DOJ in 2006

Remember the press blaming Democrats for Martha Alito's tearful run from the room? That was Schmidt's artful spin.

Schmidt's comment on the prosecutor scandal? He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette it was ""mostly a combination of nonsense and politics and provides us no concern at all," and went on to call Griffin "a great addition to the firm."

Oh, and Mercury Public Affairs? They represented the government of the Cayman Islands in 2006 and 2007, the same government that allows billions of tax dollars to go unpaid every year by corporations - including Halliburton. (Schmidt does not work on this account.)

Also a partner in Mercury is Terry Nelson, who was the National Political Director for Bush's re-election in 2004 (and possibly Schmidt's boss at the time). Before that he was Deputy Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Political Operations at the RNC, claiming that he was behind the takeover of the Senate and wins in the House in 2002. In 2000 he served as Political Director of NRCC in 2000, working to keep a GOP majority in the House.

I'm sure I've just skimmed the surface here. Basically, Steve Schmidt has been trained for his current role by the devil himself, in all its incarnations in D.C. He's going to be a problem that we need to address.

After all, he's only had this new position for 4 weeks and look at what he's done since then.

[lonestarnot]

1. Do we have a camera that didn't break when it took an image of this freak.

I'd like a nightmare for tonight.

[lonestarnot]

2. Oh fucking A. Nevermind, I found one!

:puke: I think you are right. A miniKKKarl. Even looks like him in type.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Why give this fool that kind of credit?

Whatever meme there ends up being about this guy, it won't have been pushed by me.

Far as I am concerned, he's just one more ignorant piece of shit.