'Attack opponents on their strengths.' ------Karl Rove

seafan

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Tue Feb-19-08 04:56 PM
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'Attack opponents on their strengths.' ------Karl Rove

If there's any single thing that defines a Rove campaign, it is smashmouth politics. He goes after you hammer and tong. Attack, attack, attack is the model that he used. You saw that as early as 1985 when he put together a memo for a Republican candidate for governor in Texas, and in that he quoted Napoleon, saying, in essence, that the whole art of war is a "well-circumspect defense, but also a rapid and audacious attack." That's the model that he's always used.
-----Wayne Slater, PBS interview, April 12, 2005

Clinton attacks major Obama asset - his oratory, February 19, 2008

OSHKOSH, Wis. - Circling the stage like a comedian, Barack Obama had his heartland crowd in stitches recently as he mocked detractors for calling him naive.
"Some folks are saying he hasn't been in Washington long enough. So we need to season and stew him little bit, and boil all the hope out of him," Obama joked here Friday. "Twenty years from now, when he talks and acts like us, maybe he'll be ready."

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"But I noticed the American people aren't buying that argument," Obama continued, his voice accelerating into urgency.
"This is our moment, this is our time ... " Obama roared. "We will remake this country and we will change the world!"
"Yes we can!" listeners cried, enthralled.

The Illinois senator's skill at oratory has arguably been his best weapon against rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in their battle for the Democratic nomination.
However, those inspirational words are now coming under new scrutiny as Clinton and presumptive GOP front-runner John McCain try to make them Obama's Achilles heel, claiming he offers little beyond pretty words.
"Speeches don't put food on the table," Clinton said last week in Ohio. "There's a big difference between us - speeches versus solutions, talk versus action."

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"He has been drawing on the Kennedy legacy to score points and I think very consciously and effectively," said Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek.
Indeed, one of Obama's speechwriters is a former assistant to Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who endorsed Obama.
Obama has adopted Kennedy's New Frontier message and statesmanlike manner - serious but not stern, rousing but not raucous. He adds a jigger of King's pulpit passion, a dash of Elvis Presley's glamour (though not his swivels or garb), a twist of Bill Cosby's humor and a splash of soul.

"They will try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you, run the okey-doke on you," Obama likes to warn of his foes.
In many ways, Obama's speaking style is a skillful "combination of black and white, just as Elvis' performance style was a combination of white and black," said St. Louis speechwriter Laurie Vincent.
..... But charisma also is "about a person at a particular time, about the intersection between what people want and an individual who comes along to express it," Westen noted. And the more that war-weary, economically beleaguered voters hunger for change, the harder it may be for a candidate to meet their expectations.

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Clinton Camp Seeks to Undermine Obama, February 18, 2008

DE PERE, Wis. (AP) — Top advisers to Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of plagiarism Monday, the latest effort by her campaign to undermine the Illinois senator's credibility. Obama shrugged off the criticism and noted Clinton has used his slogans, too.
Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, during a conference call with reporters, pointed to a speech Obama delivered at a Democratic Party dinner in Wisconsin Saturday that lifted lines from an address by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

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Clinton's campaign posted video clips on YouTube to illustrate the similarities in Obama's and Patrick's speeches. Obama's campaign pointed reporters to video available on the same Web site of Clinton telling Iowa voters "we are fired up and we are ready to go."

Later Monday, Obama hit back harder during a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, turning Clinton's criticism of his speeches into a biting critique of her past support for trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"She says speeches don't put food on the table. You know what? NAFTA didn't put food on the table, either," Obama said, bringing the Rust Belt crowd to its feet.

A day earlier, Clinton's spokesman criticized Obama for backing away from a pledge to accept public funding if he is the Democratic nominee, saying Obama had engaged in a pattern of walking away from promises.

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'Attack opponents on their strengths.' ------Karl Rove

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A crowd last month in Columbia, S.C., as Senator Barack Obama appealed for primary votes.