Politics and Policy   “Elections are too Important to be left to the Voters…” That seems to sum up the political life of Karl Rove quite well. He was valued by the GOP for being able to win elections. But Rove is no mere political strategists, as many assumed. He has been manipulating elections for years from the beginning of his career, in ways which are quite disturbing to the prospects for Democracy in this country. In 1972 Carl Rove ran for President of the College Republicans. But he didn’t simply try to persuade fellow young Republicans that he was the best candidate. Instead, he implemented a plot to disqualify his opponents delegates. Using a copy of the group’s constitution which had unconfirmed origins (different from the one used for years), he challenged the delegates’ credentials, had an opposing convention vote him as President, and submitted the competing election results to the Chairman of the Republican Party to resolve. That Chairman - George H.W. Bush – ruled in favor of Rove, and effectively threw Rove’s opponent out of the party because one of his supporters had leaked to the Washington Post a tape recording of Rove holding a seminar on how to use dirty tricks to influence an election. Apparently in Republican circles, stealing an election isn’t a sin, but letting the cat out of the bag is. Rove’s early “dirty tricks” were part intelligence gathering (such as going through the opponents trash to dig up dirt), and part pranks (Rove broke into a Democratic campaign headquarters, stole campaign stationary, and used it to distribute flyers in low-income areas promising “Free food, booze, and women” to anyone who would attend the opponent’s rally).. Lies and Deception: Turning Opponent’s Positives into Negatives. But as he gained experience, his repertoire broadened. Rove honed the tactic of taking his opponent’s strengths and turning them against him, using lies and innuendo if necessary (and even if it isn’t). In an Alabama Supreme Court race, the Democratic incumbent had a long history of working with youth groups and children’s charities. But Rove orchestrated a rumor campaign which alleged that the Democratic justice was actually a child molester, an allegation he claimed was well known in legal circles but protected by a friendly media and his high legal position. Thousands of young Republicans went home from college to their families to explain why it was important that he be removed from office to protect the children, even though no word of such allegations would ever appear in the news. Suddenly the campaign commercials showing the Democratic incumbent talking with the children supported by his charities took on an ominous meaning. The resulting election was close, and although the Republican candidate narrowly lost, the result was challenged in court, and in the end the Republican candidate was awarded the seat. Lies and Deception: Disarming Opponent’s Legitimate Criticisms: We saw this again in the 2004 Presidential Election. Bush’s National Guard record was a subject of controversy. Republicans had made it an essential part of their campaigns for years that being a war veteran was an important qualification for being elected Commander-In-Chief, which helped the Republican candidates when they were running George H.W. Bush as a candidate against Clinton, who had slipped through the Vietnam era draft by skillfully using deferments. When George W. Bush was running against Gore, it wasn’t much of an issue – Bush had served in the Texas Air National Guard, and Gore was in Vietnam but in a safe desk job. But by 2004 rumors persisted that Bush was given favored treatment due to this father’s political influence, and was largely absent from required drills while participating in political campaigns. It was clear that he was granted an early discharge from the Texas Air National Guard six months early so he could attend Harvard Business School, although it wasn’t clear if that was an exercise in favoritism or not. But Kerry, on the other hand, was a bona-fide decorated hero of the Vietnam War, despite his anti-war politics after he returned from service. To turn the “positive” into a “negative”, the Rove organization solicited private funds which were not counted or disclosed under campaign fundraising rules, and organized the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”, for the sole purpose of disputing Kerry’s credentials, arguing that he didn’t legitimately win his medals, didn’t participate in combat as claimed, and wasn’t in Cambodia at the times he said he was. When CBS Sixty Minutes prepared to run a story on Bush’s Air National Guard service, a mysterious source produced a memo purportedly written by Bush’s commander which was not complimentary to Bush. Sixty Minutes took the bait and included the memo in its story, but within a couple of hours “independent” websites run by neo-conservative Republicans began publishing information which showed that the fonts used in the memo were not available on typewriters used at the time the memo was supposed to have been written. The memo was therefore was a forgery, created by computer much more recently. The commanding officer had long since died and couldn’t be consulted, but the officer’s secretary initially said she didn’t remember the memo, didn’t think the officer would have typed one himself, but that the comments disparaging to Bush were pretty much reflected the commander’s views of Bush. But this last part was buried in the resulting scandal which ultimately cost Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor, his job. More importantly, it made the entire story far too dangerous for any mainstream media to even bring up for the rest of the election, fearing any sources could be similarly discredited. Any comments about Bush’s National Guard service were hooted down by conservative commentators, saying that all such charges were “proven to be lies”. But lost from the public debate was any discussion that aside from the existence of the memo, the rest of the story was factually correct, and Bush’s commander was indeed upset at Bush’s undisciplined attitude, but helpless to take action due to the political position of Bush’s father. The source of the memo was never disclosed. But the speed in which it was discredited on “independent” neo-conservative blogs, which was picked up by the national news media and disseminated by the next morning, indicates that someone other than CBS news knew about the memo before it was made public by Sixty Minutes, even to the point of having seen a copy of the forged memo itself. It has all the earmarks of a Rove “bomb”, which not only took the “National Guard Service” issue off the table, but also took out Dan Rather, who the right-wing has hated for years (blaming him for, among other things, Nixon being forced to resign in the Watergate scandal). Election Rigging Normally, elections for positions as a state auditor or secretary of state or even as a justice on a State Supreme Court, don’t attract much attention or money from the political parties. But Rove targeted such positions with the type of money and attention which would normally be reserved for a Congressional campaign. The result was that Democratic incumbents were often overwhelmed by massive amounts of money and negative advertising, and defending themselves against unsubstantiated and emotional charges which came at them much faster than they could issue effective denials. Why so much effort for such seats with so little national influence? The answer became clear in the 2000 Presidential election. With the Presidential election being held in balance by a mere few hundred votes in Florida, the Republican Secretary of State called a premature halt to the re-counts and certified the election in favor of George W. Bush, despite orders from Florida judges to the contrary. The U.S. Supreme Court, controlled by a Republican-appointed majority, gave the Presidential election to Bush in a 5-4 vote. By making sure Republicans held control of the offices which certify the results of elections, the Republicans could in many ways control the outcome of those elections. Consider the 2004 election. The Secretary of State in Ohio, a Republican and Bush loyalist, engaged in a patently illegal “scrub” of the voter roles, removing thousands of voters from the roles from Democratic precincts (but not Republican precincts). On voting day, reliable Republican precincts found themselves with a plethora of voting machines (ensuring no lines and quick and easy voting). In contrast, reliable Democratic precincts found the number of their voting machines reduced to a mere handful, with lines stretching into the street and some wait times to vote passing eight hours. Once inside, Democratic voters often were faced with hostile Republican poll watchers which challenged the voting eligibility of many Democratic voters. Ohio narrowly gave its electoral votes to Bush, which had the result of giving Bush the close 2004 election. In Washington State’s 2004 Governor’s election, Rove’s students attempted similar tactics, with less success. Not anticipating the closeness of the race, they hadn’t done the homework in advance to tilt the odds in their favor. The initial count gave the Republican candidate a tiny majority of votes (less than 200 votes difference), and an even smaller victory in the automatic subsequent machine re-count. But the hand re-count, the final word on the subject under Washington law, gave the Democratic candidate a very narrow victory. Proceeding under state law, the Republicans filed a challenge in a very Republican county that had only two judges, the first of whom recused himself leaving the second judge to handle the case. During the months preceeding the trial, the Republicans tried to extract as much political benefit as possible, dribbling out news releases of “newly discovered” Democratic voter fraud in Seattle’s strongly democratic King County. But the trial judge ultimately ruled that the few cases of ineligible voters which were proven had actually voted for the Republican candidate, and therefore the Republicans couldn’t prove that the handful of cases they had collected could have changed the course of the election, and he approved the certification of the election to the Democratic candidate. But that wasn’t entirely the end of that story. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction among some within the Republican Party that some local Republican officials hadn’t done more to assist the party in the disputed election. Specifically, the King County Prosecutor, the Washington State Secretary of State, and the U.S. District Attorney for the Western District of Washington were all criticized. Some right-wing conservatives argued that the Secretary of State should never have certified the election to the Democratic candidate (despite the fact that he had no authority to do otherwise), and the King County Prosecutor and the U.S. Attorney were criticized for not using their office to investigate and prosecute “pervasive Democratic Voter Fraud”, in support of the Republican charges, despite both of them saying that there was no evidence upon which for them to proceed. But Karl Rove managed to claim at least one victim: the U.S. Attorney, John MacKay, previously a rising star in the Republican Party, was forced to resign by Bush in what is now known as the “U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal” which is still being investigated by Congress. (Posted by Rick in Seattle, May 2, 2007).   Check out the other “Politics and Policy” Articles: Politics and Policy Articles   Sponsors: College Rowing Scholarships Title IX has made hundreds of college rowing scholarships available for women rowers, and recently some colleges have even begun to offer scholarships to a select few of their men's rowers, also. Who gets these scholarships, and how do those rowers get noticed by the college coaches, whereas others do not? What type of athelete is the college coach looking for? Can non-rowers really have a chance at a rowing scholarship? What NCAA regulations impact a high school student hoping to row in college? This page is devoted to resources which help answer those questions.            Copyright 2006-2007 - Brookridge Associates Inc. All rights reserved.