Picture courtesy of Luskin website -
And here's some text to go along with it, from James Taranto at www.opinionjournal.com, proving that Rove is an EVIL GENIUS
Karl Rove may be ending his stint as White House deputy chief of staff, but that doesn't mean we can say goodbye to his slash-and-burn approach to politics. A pair of news stories show just how far he is willing to go in order to win. First, from the Associated Press:
Master GOP strategist Karl Rove won't let up in his attacks on Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton. . . .
He harshly criticized Clinton, saying more people have an unfavorable than favorable opinion of the New York senator and former first lady.
"She enters the general election campaign with the highest negatives of any candidate in the history of the Gallup poll," Rove said.
"It just says people have made an opinion about her. It's hard to change opinions once you've been a high-profile person in the public eye, as she has for 16 or 17 years."
Hillary Clinton may be tough, but can even she withstand such harsh criticism? (On the bright side for her, if she can, she ought to be able to convince voters that Osama bin Laden is no match for her.)
Rove isn't just vicious, he's also stunningly ingenious. The Los Angeles Times reports that he has invented a diabolical strategy called "reverse psychology":
Why did Rove, who often stays in the background, step forward to deliver such public attacks--especially when the Democrats haven't begun to choose their presidential candidate for 2008 and when the general election is more than a year away?
The answer might seem obvious: Rove saw [Mrs.] Clinton as a formidable opponent and wanted to get his licks in early.
For high-level campaign professionals like Rove, however, that kind of thinking may be too simple. . . .
Rove's weeklong broadside against Clinton--which he is expected to repeat in multiple appearances on television talk shows today--looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology.
According to the Times, Rove did this four years ago when he pretended to attack John Kerry but his real target was John Edwards. The theory was that "Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most."
The Times asks: "Is Rove playing a similar game against Clinton? Is he trying to stampede Democrats into nominating her, having concluded that [Barack] Obama, Edwards or someone else would pose a stiffer challenge to the Republican nominee?"
Or is that just what he wants them to think? Could it be that this Rove is practicing double reverse psychology, saying what he actually means in the expectation that Democrats will take it the opposite way? But nah, that couldn't be. Even Rove isn't brilliant and evil enough to think of that.
Or is he?
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