L.A. Times: Clinton may be a target of Rove's reverse psychology (Bush-Kerry 2004 flashback)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Clinton may be a target of Rove's reverse psychology
In a tactic from the '04 Bush-Kerry match-up, the strategist could be trying to divert attention away from a more formidable Democrat.
By Peter Wallsten
August 19, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-rove19aug19,1,4872976.story?coll=la-news-a_section

WASHINGTON — Day after day last week, outgoing White House political strategist Karl Rove delivered slashing attacks on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner. Her healthcare record was "spotty and poor," he declared. Her candidacy was "fatally flawed," he said. And no one with her negative poll numbers, he stated, "has ever won the presidency."

---SNIP---

The decision to focus on the New York senator to the exclusion of other potentially formidable Democratic standard-bearers such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered a rare glimpse into a world where things are not always what they seem -- the world of modern-day electioneering, whose denizens often prefer going from A to B by way of Z.

In this case, Rove's weeklong broadside against Clinton -- which he is expected to repeat in multiple appearances on television talk shows today -- looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology that his team employed three years ago when it was preparing for President Bush's reelection bid.

The ploy was described by Rove lieutenant Matthew Dowd during a postmortem conference on the 2004 election at Harvard University the month after Bush defeated Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

[skids]

1. But who's to say it is not WaPo doing reverse reverse psychology?

Or maybe you, Amerigo, are doing reverse reverse reverse psychology? :-)

This is getting silly. No this is way past silly. Honesty is a lost art these days, and even when we see it it's for reasons less obvious than principle. It doesn't matter if you're talking about politics, or gardening, every phrase has layers of subtext, every word a motive. Things mentioned in passing are the main point, and the main point is just window dressing.

You cannot even tell apart satire from reality anymore. As a culture we've arrived at Babylon. We cannot communicate with each other because over half of everything said is a lie.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Nicely said. When one begins to hypothesize whether a particular psychological ploy is being

utilized, one is quickly enemeshed in webs of deceit.

MKJ

[pnwmom]

3. Kerry won, if you go by votes cast but not counted, in OH and FL.

He should be President today. So Rove's strategy, whatever it was, didn't work well enough -- he had to overcome Kerry's lead with election fraud.

In the same way, he could be wrong about Clinton or anyone else he deemed the front runner. Our biggest concern should again be with election fraud.

[maximusveritas]

4. It's pretty obvious that's what they're doing

They would love nothing more than to face Hillary. The MSM would love it too.