I think Rove is actually trying to discourage Republicans from over-using the middle name slur.
I think he's saying not to for two reasons. One is he wants to plausible deniability. The other is that it actually does backfire if they really over-do it, because the "insult" will lose its punch. The whole reason it works in the first place is that the name "Hussein" is strange and exotic. The the Muslim "smear" only works if it's whispered in dark corners, and the people who believe it will never see it challenged. People who are likely to believe something like that aren't going to, say, look up the facts on the internet.
But with the amount of press coverage that this whole issue has had, anybody that's been following the primaries even a little bit has probably heard authoritative voices saying clearly that Obama is not a Muslim. That means that anyone who believes he is is gullible. This smear is now on its last legs. It will join the ranks of hysterical, discredited conspiracy theories that people are embarrassed to be associated with. Tinfoil hat land.
As for the exotic thing. Over-using the middle name smear not only risks making it banal, it deals a body-blow to the whole strategy of using Islam to scare people. Saddam Hussein has been out of the picture for a while. With all the press coverage Obama gets, if they over-use the name Hussein when talking about Obama, before long, the first thing people will think of when they here "Hussein" will not be Saddam, it will be Barack Obama. Using the middle name slur could actually hurt him if they do it just a little bit, but using it too much will undo a lot of that damage and make the slur irrelevant.
I am Spartacus.
No, he thinks he is being clever.
But he goes even further, Hubris...... it's a true twofer. After he's done exactly what you said he goes even further over the line by injecting the "having ties to" farrakhn anti-Semitic/muslim implication as "valid". I'm surprised he didn't repeat all the vile shit as toady punkinhead attempted to do.
He has no "ties". The person said he was for Obama. Didn't offer him money or anything else that would create "ties". I happen to think "denounce" is more powerful a word than reject..... and yet they press on with this shit.
Hey, did rover have his flag pin on when he did that interview? Because, yanno, that's what's really matters here. feh.
Why the fuck isn't that traitor in prison?
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