Bonanza!
by digby
Speaking of Karl Rove being back in the saddle, this has been the most popular story on AOL news for the last 24 hours:
Bush Makes Promise to Dead Soldier’s Mom
Says He’ll Get Her Reports on How Son Died
CLINTONVILLE, Wis. (Aug. 12) – Nearly three years ago, Beth Karlson’s son died in Iraq. Barely a day after meeting with President Bush, the mother said Friday that she’s much closer to getting some answers about the incident that killed her son.
“We just got off the phone with the White House. It is in the process,” she said Friday. “I am not bashful. When you got his ear, you might as well do something.”
Karlson said she was among some families of soldiers killed in Iraq who had private meetings with Bush at an Oneida police station Thursday during his trip to Green Bay that included a fundraiser for Republican U.S. House candidate John Gard.
Her son, Army Staff Sgt. Warren S. Hansen, 36, was one of 17 soldiers killed when two Blackhawk helicopters collided above Mosul on Nov. 15, 2003.
Karlson, 63, said that during her and her husband’s “very personal” meeting with the president, she brought up her frustration in obtaining the official Army report about the crash.
Karlson said Bush promised that he would look into the matter and get her the reports.
“It was a very private meeting and that is the way we want to keep it,” she said Friday. “He is a wonderful man. How many other presidents have sat down with the families? None that I know of.”
[…]
“He said, ‘I just love the military. There’s just something about military families.’ And he thanked us for raising the type of child we did. That’s part of what he wrote in the scrapbook,” Karlson told the newspaper.
Ok, here we go. Bush the fearless terrorist killer and benevolent Dad is back. It must be election time. Rove thinks he can squeeze out one more win through the bullhorn. They are going full out with a turbo-charged version of their tried and true “Democrats are effeminate pansies and the Republicans are real manly men” campaign. The loving president Dad who manfully “comforts the moms and widders” is a staple of such imagery, making it seems as though attacking him is attacking them.
The constant reference to McGovern is this season’s Swift Boat smear. Since Karl doesn’t have a single candidate to tar with cowardly Vietnam stories he has chosen instead to run against the fabled “left wing” of the Democratic party circa 68-72. The point is less to convince the electorate than it is to trash talk the Democrats into backing off a harsh critique of the war. And it’s remarkably effective. As we can see from countless articles and columns of the past few weeks, nothing sends the timorous insider Dems scurrying like an accusation that the Party is in the clutches of the crazy liberals. The man knows his adversaries.
But the other side of the coin is to present the Codpiece as grown-up contrast and rehab his reputation. Bush is, aftger all, remarkably unpopular and he is what’s dragging down the party. Part of the plan requires him and all his minions to swagger and talk tough, of course. But this formulation of the hippie kids running amuck also needs something less confrontational: the patient parent who can calm the waters. Here comes Ben Cartwright, the pops of the Ponderosa whose credo was”A man’s never wrong doing what he thinks is right.”
I don’t think it’s going to work again. It’s like the third sequel of a bad movie. The hippie extremist plot is absurd, the hysterical dialog is unintentionally funny and the actors are out of shape and looking old. Worst of all, the star is now box-office poison.
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