Last time, it was Swift Boats. This time it's the TANG memos. Drudge - which of course is Rove-spin HQ - has the following three small headlines.
GRAPHIC: DIFFERENCE IN DOCUMENTS...
EX-GUARDSMAN: I CONTACTED KERRY CAMPAIGN...
COORDINATED WITH CLELAND ...
Followed by...
BUSH QUESTIONS AUTHENTICITY
(I provide no links because that would be gross.)
The real story is of-course a non-story... Burkitt contacted the Kerry campaign, got nowhere, got a hold of Cleland, Cleland said to keep fighting, but then the Kerry campaign never followed up. Burkitt gave up.
Here is the story behind the story. Rove wants to keep this alive. It is a distraction from Iraq. In fact, the prevailing conspiracy theories are as follows. (a) Rove had Karen Hughes and Scott McClellan plant the forged documents when they were scrubbing the TANG files when Bush is governor, so that if copies ever turned up they could call the originals from the files - or copies of them - forgeries and thus discredit any document that purported the truth... the truth being that Bush disobeyed an order. (b) Rove found out that 60 minutes was doing the story and had a mole fax the forged documents from a Kinkos near Burkitt's house, thus linking Burkitt with the tainted documents.
The next part of this campaign is to try to link it to Kerry campaign. The Cleland story, combined with the Burkitt story and Bush's comments on the documents is the first salvo.
All I can say is that I hope that the Kerry campaign is on guard for this stuff, and ready to counter-attack. Don't let them build a grounswell of rumor, and get traction with the mainstream press on this kind of story. The more that people discuss Rove's clear involvement in forging the memo, the better. The lesson of Swift Boat... Nip it in the bud.