Green light for dirty tricks

For those of you who are wondering, I'm not really going to be doing polling updates on this blog any more and have removed those posts. Running the Numbers is still active, as are numerous other state poll-tracking sites on the web.

Anyway, this column by Eleanor Clift confirms what I had sort of suspected about the Swift Boat Veterans campaign, namely that, while it may not be technically traceable to Bush or Rove, they have ways to signal under the table to their associates that it's time for something like this:

Aug. 27 - Karl Rove makes Chuck Colson look like a girly man. Colson didn’t have the audacity to go after John Kerry’s military record when President Nixon was looking for dirt on antiwar leaders. After researching Kerry’s medals, Colson, who now heads a prison ministry program, backed off. “Maybe Chuck knew he was going to find Jesus back then because he had a degree of shame,” says a senior staffer to a Senate Republican.

The Kerry campaign thinks it has succeeded in discrediting the scurrilous attack on Kerry’s military service, but Rove got what he wanted. Instead of talking about a failed war in Iraq and a new report that shows 1.3 million more Americans living in poverty, we’re debating what happened in the Mekong Delta in 1968. The strategy “came straight from the West Wing,” says the GOP staffer. “Nobody should be confused.” Asked to explain, this Republican says Rove is smart enough to keep technical distance. But all it takes is a well-placed wink to activate a web of Bush family hit men, confidantes and deep-pocket donors. “They know what to do—it’s like sleeper cells that get activated,” he says, likening the players to “political terrorists.”

They sprang into action in 2000 when Bush was running in the primaries against John McCain. After getting beat in New Hampshire by McCain, Bush’s first event was at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Standing next to Bush on the stage was a veteran who went right at McCain, questioning his Vietnam service while Bush remained silent. A whisper campaign told voters that McCain had a black child. (The McCains have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.) McCain lost the primary; the veteran became a Bush administration appointee.

The charges advanced by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would never hold up in a court of law. These men would have us believe, contrary to Navy records and countless eye witnesses, that Kerry did not act heroically and had a grand plan to manipulate medals from the military.

[snip]

My Republican mole on Capitol Hill says the green light has gone out to Republicans to do whatever it takes to get Bush elected. “This is the way we hold onto power,” he says with disgust. Pollster John Zogby’s survey of battleground states taken last week as the Swift Boat controversy raged shows no fundamental change in the race. “It’s running its course, and it may boomerang,” he says of the attack on Kerry’s heroism. The fact that the sleeper network has gone nuclear is evidence of Bush’s weakness, not his strength, says Zogby. “If [the Bush team] weren’t seeing serious damage, they wouldn’t be hitting so hard so early. The president is on the ropes; there’s no other way of looking at it.”

Definitely worth reading the whole column.