Karl Rove’s 12-Step Program to Dry-Drunk Power: A Primer

The title of this piece is not a joke. The subject of this piece is not a joke, either. What I offer here is merely a reader’s digest of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, by James Moore and Wayne Slater.

First things first, even if a trifle fussy: Rove didn’t make Bush “presidential” as the book’s title suggests -- he made him president. That’s all. The road to becoming presidential rather than president would have had to start somewhere deep inside Bush years and years ago, and that just never happened. Too many parties; too little curiosity; way, way too much egotistical indulgence in royal entitlement to ever permit the emotional and intellectual growth incumbent on anyone aspiring to be president in the sense of the word we all grew up with.

No, Bush was simply programmed, packaged and promoted as a leader, by none other, of course, than Karl Rove. Yet after all this time there still seems to be a mystery surrounding Rove, an enduring question mark of how he managed to do so much with so little. So for those who haven’t read the book and are curious, or, especially for those wanting to run for office or wanting to help an ideological compatriot run and would like a primer on how to succeed in politics, I give you this from Rove’s career, right from the book, point by point. No joke.

I’ve numbered the brief notes I took when reading it some time ago and have added when necessary a clarifying word or two, as memory served.

1. Use surrogates to attack your opponent. Never let your guy (or yourself, if you happen to be running) rip into the other guy. Find some lackey who’s more than willing to get vicious ugly for you. Your guy will look like a disinterested prince.

2. Leak harmful information. This is pretty much your basic opposition-research stuff. But leak it; don’t announce it. And certainly it helps to develop friendly relations with journalists of a whorish bent. Devastating information on your opponent isn’t worth much if you can’t get the word out.

3. Turn rumor into fact. Better yet, start a rumor about your opponent and use the media whores with whom you’ve developed a good relationship to hammer away at whatever you’ve invented. Before long everyone will at least assume that where there’s smoke there’s fire.

4. Use well-organized 3rd-party groups to make allegations. This is closely related to #3. In short, if you can find a Swift-Boat kind of outfit to go libelous on your behalf, do it. Also see #1 – surrogates and the disinterested prince.

5. Funnel money to a 3rd-party candidate similar in ideology to your opponent’s to dilute your opponent’s vote. Self-explanatory.

6. Use ties to law enforcement to launch bogus investigations against your opponent. You’ll need to be comfortably in bed with a high-powered D.A., though, so this tactic isn’t for the chronically un-empowered.  You also can’t harbor any compunctions about bankrupting an innocent person through legal expenses or even sending him to jail and destroying his family. This is rather big-league stuff, and not for the squeamish.

7. Associate your guy’s political positions with God and flag. Be creative. If needed, rewatch Animal House for inspiration, the part in which Otter defends his incredibly guilty pals before a college court in a rip-roaring burst of offended patriotism. It can be done.

8. Always position your opponent as an agent of the status quo, your guy as the candidate for change. Self-explanatory.

9. Build your messages on what the public already believes in. Closely related to #7. Don’t ever try to introduce the electorate to something unfamiliar or convince it of something new. Another angle is to play on preexisting prejudices. If the public hates freckled people, your guy hates freckled people. Always has.

10. “Explaining is losing.” This is the only direct quote I’ve lifted from the book, because it is key, absolutely critical. If your guy has to explain anything – his policies, his past, anything – then your guy is playing a losing game. Voters in general don’t want to be burdened with policy details and candidates certainly don’t want to get mired in personal explanations. Just forget explaining anything -- anything at all -- and move on. It’ll work. You’ll be amazed.

11. Use push polling. Again, this is high-powered stuff for the monied pros. Don’t call registered voters and ask if they like so-and-so’s position on something. Call and ask if they like the satanic plan your Illuminati opponent wants to shove through Congress should he get there with all his corrupt campaign cash. You get the poll results you want, and better yet, you leave the right impression of your opponent in the minds of the questioned.

12. Pick off special-interest support for your opponent. In other words, be a hypocritical flip-flopper like all get out (and don’t bother explaining it). Bush’s decision before the 2004 campaign on erecting steel tariffs is an excellent example.

So there’s your primer, in no targeted order of importance. The other side already knows all this stuff and uses it. Now get out there and do the same. This is America.

Comments

[Carolyn]

Sure Rove is the captain of the ship, but don't discount the role of the mega corporations, which own and control the media - and thus the message.

IF they had wanted to stop bush cold in 2000, all they had to do was to give EQUAL WEIGHT to the plethora of damaging facts about his past. If they had wanted to stop him in 2004, all they had to do was to give EQUAL WEIGHT in reporting the truth about the first four years. Rove's "genius" only works so well because they LET it. By choosing what to censor and what to sensationalize they control enough of the majority of people to direct the outcome.

The "whorish journalists" are not working in a vaccum - they are merely tools in advancing the agenda of the "suits" upstairs in the corporate media.

Corporations only care about the bottom line: Which candidate will get them more dollars/help to advance their own agenda? OK then, he's our man - now lets help Rove get him in the Whitehouse.

[antares]

Like Carolyn says, don't ignore the other players.

Sure, Rove is the Ring master of this twisted circus, but don't loose sight of the other guilty parties who enaballed Bush's Presidency.
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld learned all their tricks from the master, Tricky Dick himself (who learned from Sen. McCarthy, ew!) when Rumsfeld worked in his cabinet, and Cheney was brought in to work in Ford's. Since then, they have been orchestrating a patient, well timed take over. All the same people are connected to some of the bigest scandals in 35 years, and yet they're more powerful than ever.

[lj]

Bravo! PM Carpenter's "12-step Talking Points" vs Karl Rove, the evil Republican Propaganda meister, and subject of the book "Bush's Brain", from which Carpenter's "12 Steps" are distilled.

IF you want a further distillation of how Gore and Kerry LOST their elections (despite actually "winning" their elections, at that), the operative word is "ATTACK!" or "your campaign MUST BE CONFRONTATIONAL." An exception to rule #1. ("use surrogates to make your attacks") would have been George W. Bush's relentless use of the term "FLIP-FLOPPER" against John Kerry, as in "My opponent is a FLIP-FLOPPER." Indeed, in the Maimi debate (debate #1 or #2), Bush all but called Kerry a LIAR: when asked by Kerry why he hadn't made good on his "catch Osama bin Laden Dead or Alive" pledge, and specifically Bush's comments that "he wasn't concerned about bin Laden", Bush looked directly into the camera and said "I never said that... my opponent is E_X_A_G_G_E_R_A_T_I_N_G."

Of course, Bush HAD said exactly that: in an Oct. 2003 WH press conference, in response to a reporter's question, bush leaned on the podium and said "You know, I'm really not that concerned about bin Laden anymore.. he doesn't concern me that much anymore."

MoveOn.org made a (TV-video) ad showing bush sneering denial in the debate, followed by his own comments from the earlier press conference. IF the Kerry campaign had run that ad in EVERY critical market, along with video of Bush prattling to his big-bucks $$ donors "some people call you the elite.. I call you my base" moments before snickering "I guess I won the trifecta!" because the 9-11 attacks gave him an excuse to break his "no deficit spending pledge," Kerry would have carried ANOTHER 10% of the electorate.

For his part, Al Gore REFUSED to STAND UP for the Children in Texas KICKED OFF of health care, pre-school, and after-school programs. It is easy to understand why Gore DISTANCED himself from the young and vulnerable TARGETTED by BUSH'S budget slashings: Gore did not want to appear to be GIVING MONEY AWAY TO MINORITIES. OK.. so HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO FIND SOME WHITE KIDS who had suffered from Bush's Texas budget cuts, and ask THEM what they felt about Bush giving huge tax breaks to wealthy corporations?

Clinton won in '92 when his WAR ROOM would REBUT Bush-Republican ATTACK ADS within hours of their being aired. Truman won in '48 by taking on the Republican Party, and NOT shying away from the Segregationist Southern Dixiecrats. But Gore and Kerry think that the way to WIN is to STAND FOR NOTHING.. to let BULLY BUSH beat up on the most vulnerable children, seniors, and disenfranchised voters in society.

[buckfush]

If you want to thwart the Republican Party then look to the companies who donate to them or stand by and do nothing
while the Republicans destroy people's lives.

Tell THEM you want an increase to the minimum wage.

Tell THEM to stop social security piratization and instead lift the limit of taxable income for the FICA tax which will keep social security solvent.

Tell THEM you want to repeal the faulty prescription drug law and replace it with a real prescription drug benefit that covers 80 percent of medication cost.

Tell THEM you remain outraged about the 2004 stolen election in Ohio.

They put the Republicans into office. Tell THEM what you want and boycott THEM until you get what you want. Join together and use the power of your purchases to get what you want in congress.

Stop complaining and do something.

Please pass this onto as many other people as you can especially on forums where independents can read.

Also put the url www.boycott-republicans.com on index cards and leave them in your libraries, supermarkets and post office bulletin boards.


How can the people force a mean spirited conservative congress to pass a progressive agenda? Simple. I have picked some well known companies that appear related to issues that progressives find important. Boycott these companies and make them lobby congress and get what we want or they go bust. While I agree we need to elect a Democratic congress and a Democratic president, with a consumer boycott we the people can exert influence every single day and not just at election time and not just with letters or petitions but with petitions with the bite of a boycott.

Join the revolution for progressive legislation

http://www.boycott-republicans.com

Write this url on your one, five and ten dollar bills.

Call Eckerd Pharmacy Corporate Headquarters at 800 325 3737, Call CVS Pharmacy Corporate headquarters at 888 607 4287 and Call Walgreens Pharmacy Corporate headquarters at 800 289 2273 and tell them you will not purchase any products from their drug stores until they get the Republican congress to repeal the faulty prescription drug benefit and replace it with a simple 80 percent coverage benefit under Medicare Part B. Then sign the petition.

Call Walmart at 800 WALMART and tell them you will not buy from them until they get the Republican congress to stop social security privatization, increase the minimum wage to TEN dollars an hour, and extend unemployment insurance for people who lost jobs and sought work for more than 6 months. then sign the petition.

Sign the petition to stop social security privatization, increase the minimum wage,extend unemployment insurance for people who lost jobs and sought work for more than 6 months and repeal the faulty Republican prescription drug benefit and replace it with a simple 80 percent coverage of medication under Medicare Part B. Please get two other people to sign this petition.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/progressive

Sign the petition to stop the War and Occupation in Iraq

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stopthewar


Boycott Wendy's Restaurants and Outback Steakhouses.

Why you say? Wendy's Restaurants operate out of Dublin, OHIO and Outback Steakhouses operate out of FLORIDA. Now you see. I have picked two well known companies that operate out of the states that have brought us stolen elections by the immoral Republican Party. These companies operate restaurant chains that have restaurants around the United States.

Now why boycott them after the effort to overturn Bush's second stolen election has failed? Boycott them, call them, email them and tell them that we will not go to their restaurants until Ohio and Florida elects democrats to Governorships, Secretaries of state and majorities in their legislatures in Ohio and Florida. In other words we will punish them for allowing the stolen elections to happen in 2000 and 2004. Will it work? Well do it and see.


I had a petition to demand a revote in Ohio and Florida at

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/revote

but now I use it to allow people to express their opinions on the 2004 and 2000 stolen elections and encourage them to boycott Wendy's and Outback Steakhouse, 2 famously Republican contributors.

Thank you.

Also visit these fine websites

http://www.Buyblue.org

http://www.2005blue.com

http://www.choosetheblue.com

http://www.imblue.net

[Dmcg]

Friggin great post. Wish Harry Reid would read it.

Cheers,
DMCG