Rove picks the wrong metaphor to slam Obama [View All]

[ProSense]

Rove picks the wrong metaphor to slam Obama

Posted June 23rd, 2008 at 3:25 pm

Karl Rove has made it clear on multiple occasions that he actively dislikes Barack Obama — if there’s a more helpful testament to the strength of Obama’s character, it doesn’t come to mind — and he continues to make his criticisms of the Democratic candidate more and more personal.

ABC News’ Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as “coolly arrogant.”

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove said, per Christianne Klein. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

Rove said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., “needs to come right at him.” He referred to the latest Newsweek poll showing Obama with a 15-point lead over McCain as nonsense, though he used a more scatological synonym. Rove said he was heading over to the White House for lunch and a chat with the President, Klein reports.

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Of all the metaphors Rove could have used to attack the first credible African-American candidate for the presidency, he had to go with “the guy at the country club”? Seriously? Jake Tapper noted, accurately, that Obama “wouldn’t be admitted into many country clubs that members of the Capitol Hill Club frequent.”

Indeed, this is also surprisingly off-message for Rove.

For months, Rove has sought to characterize Obama as a dangerous outsider who we don’t really know and can’t trust. Everything about him, the argument goes, is “foreign.” The various far-right smears — about Obama’s religion, his family, his name, his patriotism — are all part of the same conservative frame.

Now, however, Obama’s part of the country-club set? Hanging around with a martini? If I’m not mistaken, Rove is talking about the ultimate insider — which is the opposite of the message Rove was emphasizing up until very recently. Can’t these guys pick one smear and go with it?

And finally, Greg Sargent notes the irony of Rove’s attack.

It should also be noted, of course, that Rove took a man who actually is a country club denizen who makes “snide comments” about others — that would be George W. Bush — and turned him into a regular Joe. Meanwhile, the guy who would struggle for admittance to some of these exclusive enclaves — Obama — is now “the guy at the country club.” Rovian up-is-downism at its finest.

Exactly. Rove’s description sounds spot-on like Bush — right down to the “snide comments” he makes about people who pass him by.

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