Karl Rove

Fox News is betting a kinder, gentler approach will rescue it from its ratings slump

Scott Feschuk salutes those whose failures made us feel better about ourselves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PE5V4Uzobc

The text of a press release received a few hours ago.

I never liked Family Guy, but now that they’re doing an episode with such delightful people as Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove, I’m clearly on board.

We now know that Joe The Plumber is not a plumber, nor is he in the tax bracket that led him to challenge Barack Obama on tax policy. Yet, he is now campaigning with John McCain and is referred to at every campaign stop by the Republican ticket. It is possible that this election prop may have done more to tighten the race in key battleground states than any other line of attack. Lower taxes and limited government intervention are two basic tenets of conservatism in a center-right nation, and they have become the best closing arguments for McCain.

Must-reads: Don MacPherson on what Jean Charest’s up to; Lawrence Martin on Dion’s team; Michael Coren on Opus Dei.

What a difference a week makes! The daily Gallup tracking poll had Obama up by nine points last week. Now, his lead is down to three points.

In recent days, we have observed a more aggressive tone and manner from the McCain campaign. Despite the closeness of the race, the McCain campaign has appeared listless and unfocused in the last month. The senator himself has seemed snarky and has now endorsed the kind of negative ads that he normally would have criticized in the past. To some, it is a sign of desperation. To me, it is the Rove effect.

In recent days, former Bush advisor, Karl Rove, has begun a campaign to denigrate the candidacy of Barack Obama. He has attempted to describe Obama as arrogant, self-centered, self-righteous, and devoid of any principle. The objective is to portray Obama as the choice of the liberal media and a candidate of privilege. It is ironic that Rove benefited from the fact his own candidate, George W. Bush, was very much a child of privilege and proved to be, more often than not, arrogant and self righteous in his term of office.