Barack Obama Should Toss Rove’s Advice In Garbage

Barack Obama received some unsolicited advice from Republican strategist Karl Rove through an article in the Financial Times on Sunday. Rove offered Obama some suggestions to help him beat Hillary Clinton. Rove suggests in the article that Obama must, “First, stop acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way.” So Rove thinks the Democrats need to scrap a little more. He tells Obama he acts like a wuss when he is around Clinton. Rove says Obama appears “weak and ineffectual.” “In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her.” Rove said the second thing Obama needs to do is, “focus on the fact that many Democrats have real doubts about Hillary. They worry she cannot win, will be a drag on the ticket and that if she got to the White House it would be a disaster.” That one comes straight from the White House and Republican talking points. I guess if you say it enough it becomes the truth. The third suggestion was pretty basic. Rove tells Obama, “when you create controversies do not pick issues where you are playing the weaker hand.” Rove uses this suggestion actually to take a swipe at Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience. Rove offers a few more basic suggestions that most politicians already have a grasp on. His sixth suggestion is, “find a way to gently belittle her whenever she tries to use disagreements among Democrats as an excuse to complain about being picked on.” Rove then tells Obama that Hillary is not a nice person like Bill Clinton was. Hillary is, “cold, distant and conspiracy-minded, more like Richard Nixon.” How about more like Karl Rove, which this seems to describe to the tee.
Obama should take this advice and use it in the bird cage to catch the poop, because that is about all it is worth to him. For the most part this is basic, at best, political advice. The rest is just trying to encourage the Democrats to scrap and belittle each other. Some are saying that Rove is just lonely and can’t stand to be away from the political process. But then they ignore the fact that he is a hard core Republican, and would have no reason to help a Democrat at all. He is just waiting for the right Republican to come out of the pact to offer his services to. He was going to jump on the Fred Thompson bandwagon, but as soon as Thompson opened his mouth he went from stud to dud. Then talks of Rove being on his team just disappeared. Notice also he used a European paper to publish this drivel. Apparently he couldn’t find an American paper to publish his propaganda, but Fox News will tell us all about it. Are the Republicans really that afraid of Clinton that they feel they need to manipulate the process in any way possible? At this point the White House is for the Democrats to lose thanks to 8 years of George Bush. Karl Rove’s advice should be ignored by all candidates, Republican and Democrat. All he has to offer is manipulation, cheating, and lies. Do we really want 4 more years of that?
Alan Cosgrove