Rove Running
By Denise Best | Related entries in General Politics, In The NewsHere’s an interesting commentary on the Rove story from this morning …
The much-discussed Washington Post story this morning headlined “Rove’s Future Role Is Debated” is a bit of a breakthrough because it’s one of the few times during Dubya’s tenure in the White House that the press has been used as a tool to fight an internal battle. The thing is that Bush hates such things. The other thing is that press secretary Scott McClellan’s messy fingerprints are all over the WaPo story, as even Bush will be able to see.
The essence of the story is that Karl Rove needs to go because he’s made life difficult for McClellan. You have to figure, therefore, that the story was leaked or sanctioned by McClellan, a fact that is telegraphed clumsily by a series of pro-McClellan sentences.
“Many mid-level staffers inside have expressed frustration that press secretary Scott McClellan’s credibility was undermined by Rove, who told the spokesman that he was not involved in the leak….’That is affecting everybody,’ said a Republican who has discussed the issue with the White House. ‘Scott personally is really beaten down by this. Everybody I talked to talks about this.’”
This is the first time ever that a sympathetic word has been published about Scott McClellan, which is tipoff #1 that the story derives from him or his friends. Tipoff #2 is the idea that what’s affecting the White House is less the whole leak affair than its effect on Scott McClellan
Hmmm … I wonder if McClellan will be entering a federal protection program to try and escape the wrath of Rove?
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
