Andrew Sullivan goes off the deep end. "It's all being run by Karl Rove!" Good thing he just got his fundraiser over with. A lot of contributors will want their money back.
THAT WAS AUGUST: Sometimes, when you do the Euro thing and take August off, you half-miss the tussle of an election campaign, the twists and turns of blogging, the daily adrenaline shots of getting hammered by various critics. But not this August. Every time I checked out the blogosphere or the cable news or the papers, I felt relieved to be absent with leave. The low point was obviously the Swift Boat vets, jumping like bait on the end of Karl Rove's line. For a president who never served in Vietnam to get his cronies to lambaste an opponent who actually put his life in danger was, well, breathtakingly bold. And you really have to hand it to Bush. He knows how to campaign hard, to deploy smears of opponents indirectly, to stoke fears of minorities to rally votes, and every other hardball tactic. I wish I could get all huffy about this, but it's always been Bush's campaign mojo: divide, smear and beam. Kerry should have seen it coming. The only thing that can deflect from it is a more effective smear in the other direction. But the Bush-haters have now so debased that currency Bush is essentially in the clear. Advantage: Rove. |
