What does Rove's nonsensical description of Obama at the country club say about Republican strategies for the fall?
Quite a bit, actually.
"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said. "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."
Most of us have read the quote, and it doesn't even make sense.
But that's the first clue that there must be strategy behind it. In fact, Rove's statement makes too little sense not to have an underlying meaning that people are expected to to pick up over time.
First of all, no one stands against the wall if they have a beautiful date. Generally, most guys want to show off, they can't help it. The guys making snide comments are always alone. And that's the key to seeing this statement's intent.
Notice Rove did NOT say 'wife'. He deliberately said 'date'. That's a very different thing, and I seriously doubt he was referring to Michelle being at the country club with him.
No one with a beautiful date leans against the wall being a smartass, unless, of course, that date is not their wife.
So here is the hand that Rove has tipped to us: Obama's too slick, too smart and too good-looking, and to arrogant to be trusted, and did I happen to mention he's black?
Because Obama is relatively handsome, young (or at least much younger than most members of the GOP), and yes because he's black, Rove's comment is an attempt to play up concerns of whites who are uncomfortable with black men dating white women, and there are a lot of those people around. That's why Rove refers to the country club in the first place, he's making Obama out to be the uppity black man, probably the only black in the room for that matter, a smartass who taunts the other club members with his young 'date'.
Rove is simply calling Obama a player.
Harold Ford got a similar treatment. The GOP's intent, of course, was much more obvious then. There was less time before that election, and less risk of backlash due to timing, but also less risk of alienating large swaths of the country with this approach since it was a state election.
Rove's description also allows him to pull the "elitist" charge in with the "player" charge, while working in the "arrogant" charge.
ALL of these charges are, to those of us familiar with Obama's biography, ridiculous.
And ALL of these charges are, to those of us familiar with McCain's biography, ironic.
McCain has been a member of the politically-connected elite his entire life and the moneyed elite for decades. McCain had a reputation for using his war hero bona fides to chase women while married to his first wife, settling on the wealthy Cindy. And I don't even know where to start on 'Arrogance'.
Four years ago, the GOP machine attacked Kerry on Bush's weaknesses: his military service being the key among them. It worked. The draft-dodger escaped scrutiny while the war hero had to continually defend his record. It was ludicrous but it worked. I recall hearing that making fun of Kerry's military service would be their strategy and thought there was no way that Bush would win.
By making these attacks now, the GOP gets these words associated with Obama. It blunts the attacks from democrats against McCain in the future. We ignore these comments even while repeating them, because, like four years ago, they just don't seem to make sense.
I have been expecting Obama's team to react faster than Kerry's did. But these punches take some time to show a bruise-- they're the groundwork for the attacks in the fall.