Rove: Obama Is The Type Of Guy Who Hangs Out At Country Clubs
At a D.C. gathering of GOP insiders today today, Karl Rove previewed the next GOP attack line on Obama, one that has overtones of "uppity fellow thinks he's better than you," but with a curious twist...
"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said... "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
Obama is "the guy at the country club"? As Jake Tapper notes, Obama probably "wouldn't be admitted into many country clubs that members of the Capitol Hill Club frequent."
It should also be noted, of course, that Rove took a man who actually is a country club denizen who makes "snide comments" about others -- that would be George W. Bush -- and turned him into a regular Joe. Meanwhile, the guy who would struggle for admittance to some of these exclusive enclaves -- Obama -- is now "the guy at the country club." Rovian up-is-downism at its finest.
Late Update: Steve Benen makes some very good points about how this attack jars against other GOP efforts to frame the attacks on Obama.
I don't think this is reporting, more like gossip.
June 23, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't actually come here for "news" do you?
June 23, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
"news" is in the eye of the beholder.
June 23, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, we come here to read you sockpuppet Republican talking points.
June 23, 2008 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You obviously do...
June 23, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a blog, what is your problem? And yeah, this kind of stuff is exactly what needs to see the light of day.
June 23, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Point taken. It's just that 'Karl Rove makes slanderous remarks behind people's backs' seems kind of obvious.
Hopefully, now that he has crawled out from under the rock he was under for so long maybe someone will be able to nail him with something that will stick.
June 23, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
The phrase "Major league asshole" comes to mind for some reason.
Anyway, we all know what kind of guy Karl Rove is, a sleaze bag who would sell his own grandmother to raise funds to screw all the people he's built up grudges against over the years.
June 23, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
You forgot the "and win elections" part.
June 23, 2008 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come on, SFC. You can't really be defending Rove.
June 23, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just pointing out that he did engineer a few winners...I hate James Carville and his tactics, but he's won a few himself.
June 23, 2008 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
To what end? Screwing over the conservative movement for the next 20 years?
June 23, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
How'd 2006 go for him?
June 23, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, he doesn't win them any more.
June 23, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, his use of his magic superpowers worked out great for you guys in 2006, didn't it?
June 23, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep, Karl sure did great for the Repubs with the past Fall elections, all right! Not.
June 23, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope he ends up in jail, lord knows he's broken enough laws.
June 23, 2008 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Poor Karl. He's really grasping at straws.
June 23, 2008 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's maddening, isn't he? Cripes.
If he had a neck, I might try to wring it.
Sorry...the dude brings out the worst in me.
June 23, 2008 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
June 23, 2008 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huh? Oh man. Now Rove's just phoning it in.
I can't really see this line of attack sticking because when I think about martini drinkers at country clubs, I invariably think of old white guys with trophy wives.
Hmmm... old white guys with trophy wives. Now who does that remind me of?
June 23, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I see what Rove is trying to do here, but I think he is taking the wrong approach. Comparing Obama to "that guy at the company Christmas party with the..." might have worked. Comparing him, however, to "that guy at the country club with the..." causes the listener's brain to fall out of gear (as it were). I read that and thought "country club? I have never been to a cocktail party at a country club. I could not care less what sort of intrigues emerge among the country club set. He is, in other words, employing an analogy which will completely miss most of his target audience. Phoning it in, indeed.
June 23, 2008 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Christmas Party wouldn't have fit, either. He doesn't want to contradict any smear e-mails.
June 23, 2008 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the "martini in his hand" bit already trespassed against that particular viral smear.
June 23, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I imagine the people dumb enough to believe anything Rove says probably wouldn't be well versed on the tenets of Islam. But yeah, "glass of water" would've been the best choice there. Makes him a health snob while keeping the smears alive. Poor old Karl's off his game.
June 23, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I was teen, back in the 1980s, I knew a little bit about the country club scene. Honestly, there were NO people who looked like Barack Obama at the country clubs. There were a lot of very white people in their Izod shirts and Laura Ashley sundresses, but no black people anywhere to be seen, except possibly the kitchen.
I hope maybe that's changed a little bit in the last 20 years, but I no longer have any personal experience with such places, thank heavens.
June 23, 2008 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phoebe,
That may very well be Rove's point, that the reason your nice allwhite country club was integrated was by court order...and just who is this uppity negro to cavort with the whites thinking he is of their economic means complete with a martini (uber elite drink) and beautiful girl on his arm?
Does he honestly think he is 'one of us'?
And the non-racist elite longstanding member inhales raises his/her nose and sniffs...n o k, dear.
Rove's remarks were to appeal to all those old white members of country clubs who now have to 'tolerate' members of country with the economic means to belong but who many members believe simply have violated their sacrosanct elite world.
this message speaks volumes...and it seems to be patterned after another black politician who does frequent country clubs, complete with a martini and his BLONDE and beautiful wife on his arm while making snide remarks as you walk by.
aka Harold Ford Jr.
June 23, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
In Rove's world, everyone does belong to a country club. That's why New Orleans is so baffling to them. They don't understand why all those people didn't just throw some bottled water into their luxuary SUV's and get out of there before Katrina hit.
June 23, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phoning it in is right.
Maybe the GOP insiders all know a similar "guy at the country club," but most Americans have never even been INSIDE a country club -- much less are familiar with the types of people who hang out at country clubs.
If Rove wants to associate Obama with a negative stereotype, maybe he should pick a stereotype that Americans are familiar with.
June 23, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think many Americans are familiar with Judge Elihu Smails from Caddyshack. But, I just can't see his Honor hanging with Barack at a club soire.
June 23, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Barack, how about a Fresca?
June 23, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL!!!
June 23, 2008 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove must have missed "Caddyshack", because setting up Obama as Ty Webb, and McCain as Judge Smails is just not going to help.
June 23, 2008 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Smails to Danny Noonan: Let's face it, son--some people *just don't belong* wink, wink
June 23, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perfect.
June 23, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove is the type of guy who hangs out at buffets.
June 23, 2008 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove's usage of the word "Uppity" is a huge dogwhistle, one in which I hope "Turd Blossom" himself accidentally inhales and chokes to fucking death on. "Uppity", as in "Uppity Negro", as in(..and excuse me for this epithet, but I think its important here)
"That N*gger thinks he's better than you!!"
June 23, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unless I'm mistaken it was Josh Marshall that used those words, not Rove.
I'm no fan of Rove but you have to admit he know how to play the game.
June 23, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey lookie, a new avatar!
Honestly, if you took yourself more seriously, more people would listen to what you have to say.
June 23, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those were Greg's word, my mistake. But the context still holds up though. That being said, based on Rove's prediction's of the 06' Elections, I have to question his knowledge of the "game".
June 23, 2008 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Those were Greg's word, my mistake. But the context still holds up though."...and that's what really matters here...not what was actually said but what we say was said. Cuz they're bad and mean and if they didn't actually say it they meant it and should be held accountable!
June 23, 2008 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
And no, after 2006, no one has to admit that "Rove knows how to play the game." Rove had one game he ran over and over again throughout his career. That game actually worked during one discrete period due to a specific set of historical circumstances. Those circustances are now, just that, history. His game stopped working in 2006 and its never going to work again. It's obsolete. The world has moved on. Unfortunately, he, and a bunch of beltway CW hacks, still thinks he's a genius with a timeless and universal applicable insight rather than just one more has-been hack.
Come to think of it, all of that also describes James Carville pretty well.
June 23, 2008 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
That has to be the stupidest analogy I've ever heard. Don't most republicans want to be the cool guy at the country clup with the hot date? I think O's standing with discontented republican voters just ticked up a notch.
June 23, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
All the Country Club wannabes are voting for him anyway...he's after the "Archie Bunkers" again...
June 23, 2008 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is what you call "projection."
Sounds like Karl might even have a bit of a man-crush going here.
June 23, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Quite possibly,
I've had the same thing said about me a few times in my life. Evidentally, to alot of people, brown liberals with a certain facility with the English language are presumed to be "snide".
June 23, 2008 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove went on to say “If we had our way, we never would have let those Presidential candidates in to the country club in the first place! Who do these Presidential candidates think they are! I swear, next time I see one of those Presidential candidates on my lawn I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later!”
June 23, 2008 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
rove is a lame i dont think rove would be allowed to go to a country club
http://sensico.wordpress.com
June 23, 2008 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove's the kind of guy that would be chatting up Jeff Gannon by the caddyshack.
June 23, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone want to take a bet on how long before we see Rove in blackface, popping his eyes, and doing a softshoe?
I'm guessing September.
June 23, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does anyone know where to go to hear the laugh track that's synched with Rove's comments?
June 23, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove jumped the shark here. But it will be the new talking point of the right.
about this elite thing...I want elites to run the country. I don't want average joes as presidents.
I like, and want, average joes as friends and neighbors, but don't want them running the country.
and, yes, the one making snide comments is, as Greg said, our current "fake everyman" George W. Bush
Elite being: representing the most choice or select; best
the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons.
June 23, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Doesn't elite mean 'good?' Is that not something we're looking for in a president anymore? ... I know elite is a bad word in politics. You want to go bowling and throw back a few beers. But the job you're applying for---if you get it and it goes well---they might carve your head into a mountain. If you don't actually think you're better than us, then what the fuck are you doing? Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who is embarrassingly superior to me."
---Jon Stewart
June 23, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn you, Jon Stewart, for saying it better than
I ever could. Damn you, Jon Stewart!
June 23, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really, this is what you have Karl? Me thinketh a little turd blossom envy. Lamont may be on to something.
I'm sure this image will be very familiar to the "hard working whites" of West Virginia and Ohio.
So what Karl is saying is Obama clings to martinis and lascivious women. He's really got my vote now, sold.
June 23, 2008 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove is the kind of guy who hangs out at Gulags. If Obama was the kind of guy who liked Country Clubs so much, he wouldn't have taken his Columbia/Harvard education/law degree back to Chicago to work in community organizing and voting rights. One of Harvard's longest standing and most prestigious law professors says that Obama was brilliant, he was the president of the Harvard Law Review and he could have had any job in any prestigious law firm in the country. Instead he chose to work for hugely less money and to help regular people. Rove on the other hand outed a CIA covert agent who was chief of operations for a long standing covert op that was in charge of tracking nuclear materials in the world. He did that to stop her husband from exposing the lies Bush and Cheney were telling in their efforts to take the U.S. to war with Iraq in a war that was based on lies and propaganda. Rove is the slimiest of the sleazeballs and he eventually became so hot that even Bush had to get rid of him. I know. It boggles the mind. It's hard to believe that there is anything Bush won't go along with, but apparently he will draw the line not at ethics or morality but at politics. Rove is a worm.
June 23, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting that no one has yet connected the cigarette connection. You think "Obama's a smoker" is not coming into play. Guy with the black hat is always the smoker. The bad guy is always the smoker. Obama.....a smoker.
June 23, 2008 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting that no one has yet made the cigarette connection. You think "Obama's a smoker" is not coming into play. Guy with the black hat is always the smoker. The bad guy is always the smoker. Obama.....a smoker.
June 23, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mind numbingly interesting...
June 23, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
My thoughts exactly... Non-smokers all across America are taking a second look at Obama...
June 23, 2008 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Time to have mommy change your diaper and take a nap.
June 23, 2008 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Hard hitting stuff coming out of the Mavericky McSame internet shop these days. You must miss working for the Clintons.
June 23, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you should go with this, I'm sure everyone in NC is anxious to hear about that scary tobacco.
June 23, 2008 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too bad he's not a smoker any more. Oh, but wait... what's the spin on that? Let me give it a shot.
Yeah, that ex-smoker tag is truly a damning character flaw. Guess I better disown him for being a quitter. What a waffling flip-flopper. He's obviously not willing to stay the course.
June 23, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
He fell off the wagon and recently admitted to resuming smoking.
A lot of willpower there. I imaging he hides in a darkened room with the bilnds drawn and security outside. No way he's going to allow anyone to get video of him smoking. Wonder why?
June 23, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The more Rove talks the more out of touch he sounds. So please tell us more Karl. Everytime you open your mouth another indy voter gets his wings and flies away from the Republican party.
June 23, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...The name is Obama, Barack Obama. This is a lovely cocktail party, pity I was not invited..."
June 23, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not this time. Not this year.
June 23, 2008 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is this "martini" garbage? Everyone knows Muslims don't drink.
June 23, 2008 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Karl Rove is the kind of guy whom swears at and undertips his caddy, and they hangs out with the other overweight guys making lewd comments about the club's wait staff, who find him repulsive, and try to avoid his table.
June 23, 2008 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno Karl, I'm not getting 'snide' from this guy, can you think of some examples?
June 23, 2008 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
does anybody listen to this guy's garbage anymore??
June 23, 2008 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bitter Much? What is this high school? Is Karl Rove the butters to Obama's Token? What is up with the beautiful date thing? Aww, poor karl can't get a date to the high school prom so he sits and watches golden girls marathon with his mommy. This is beyond Amusing, these people are shitting in their pants.
June 23, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Karl Rove isn't Butters, he's Eric Cartman.
June 23, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Turdblossom does not win elections. The Republicans on the Supreme Court stole the 2000 Election which Turdblossom had lost. Thank you very much Sandra Day O'Connor. The blood of all who died in Iraq since 2003 is on your hands.
June 23, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
And how would Rove know the kind of guy who hangs out at country clubs???
June 23, 2008 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Breaking:
Turdblossom declares that Barack Obama is actually a White Anglo Saxon Protestant(WASP) Man, because that is the type that is usually found in Country Clubs.
June 23, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like Rove smells an indictment coming his way when Obama wins in November.
June 23, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I gather that this is the sort of thing that Rove was trying to say, but by introducing the idea of a "country club" into it, I think that he completely vitiated his own message.
June 23, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's next?
{WIGGLY, GIGGLY BLONDE:}
I met Barack at the Playboy party!
Barack, call me!
June 23, 2008 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, there are few people in this world who tempt me to give them a good, old-fashioned sock in the jaw. Karl Rove is one such.
June 23, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh this is going to be really effective: Those blue collar workers in Ohio pumping their gas for $4 a gallon and losing their jobs to outsourcing can really relate to country club analogies.
What's next? Obama's that guy who doesn't have proper etiquette when riding on your personal jet? Wears out of season clothing on that yatch outting?
June 23, 2008 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove in the end is an insecure maladjusted repulsive fat masturbating creep who was in the YAF crowd in the '60s (which says it all) and revels in the notion that people credit him with svengali-like intuitive power. That's the coolest thing that's happened to him since people were rat-tailing his fat butt after gym class. He's a Segretti-trained bottom feeder who at his core is so fucking insecure about his inherent loathesomeness that he projects an image of what, in his twisted petty mind, he thinks he'd like to be himself. He covets the idea of being that smug martini-swilling trophy chick bearing country clubber. But in the end he'll always be that douchebag doing the chubby white guy lame-rap at the White House correspondents' dinner.
June 23, 2008 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barack's political career bloomed in the manure pile that is Chicago's crooked machine -- so Barack is also a turd blossom (like Rove).
Though Barack is supercilious and arrogant, he is not a "country club" type, so Rove got his imagery wrong.
June 23, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I predict Rove and the Republicans are deadly serious about using that lever this year. We heard it in the Kentucky Senate at length this spring-- and in our Senate, we're only one degree separation from Mitch McConnell's talking points.
We'll hear this stuff again.
In an ideal world, though, Rove's absurd version will let everyone start chuckling now, so that we can reach a crescendo of belly-laughs when it shows up in October television ads.
June 23, 2008 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is he talking about Barack Obama or James Bond?
June 23, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Neither.
He is describing Harold Ford Jr. who just married a beautiful BLONDE heiress.
June 23, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
More intelligence from Karl "THE MATH" Rove. And yes, Karl, Michelle is really beautiful. And that smoking thing - BY GOD - I want my primary vote back. If Obama can't give up his vices like a real man, or for that matter, a real president like we have now (remember he quit drinking, like a real man) he is NOT FIT TO BE president of this great country of U S of A and all the tobacco farmers and R.J. Reynolds.
Give me a break. Go smoke a cigarette yourself all you dweebs thinking this is important. Obama is probably in the pocket of the Tobacco Lobby right?
June 23, 2008 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
To Mr. Sargent... in your Late Update you link to Steve Benen who ... wait for it ... quotes you and Jake Tapper.
I didn't see any new information at Benen's or yours that warranted what amounts to cross-posting the same blog with a different signature.
Do you really need to feed the echo chamber?
June 23, 2008 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is too funny.
This really is too fucking funny for words. roflmao!
June 23, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is a black radical.
Obama is the guy at the country club.
Obama is a black radical.
Obama is the guy at the country club.
I wish republicans would make up their minds.
June 23, 2008 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
From "Head of State"
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-republicans-have-already-figured.html
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
What the Republicans Have Already Figured Out: "Arrogance" Equals Allowable Racism
What you will be seeing in the coming days:
The Republicans have already figured it out.
They know that precisely because Obama's greatest strength is in the fact that he offers something new, a change from long-held traditions of the past--that it is also his greatest weakness.
They know that the fervent bubbly enthusiasm is a concern--deeply buried ambiguities about race, deeply held racism, especially among older voters.
For a time, they were caught by the dilemma that Obama seemed invulnerable--that any attack, particularly the attacks that they have honed and used for so long, steeped in insinuation and vicious invention, would be regarded as racist.
Hence, the dilemma for the usual swift boat strategy.
Now they have found it. They have realized that:
1) Americans want to be free of the burdens and division of racism;
2) Many of them--including many of those who wish to be free--are not;
3) Republicans cannot raise racist issues frontally, because many people hold such views at the same time that they do not wish to see themselves as holding them;
4) They need a substitute--distanced enough from overt racism to be acceptable to those who wish to see themselves as egalitarian but still hold deeply seated racial prejudices, and fears, yet close enough to evoke those very doubts and fears--yet one that they can claim is *not* racist--with the traditional smug pose of Republican innocence, hands up, pleased at their cleverness at providing one message while claiming another, the tradition of attack over thought and truth that carried us all the way to Iraq--and beyond.
The substitute is "arrogance".
As the 527's gear up, look to see "arrogance" and "elitist" used again and again as this cycle's dark touchstone to evoke the deepest and unspoken doubts and fears, as they work in the mental demilitarized grey zone between racism and rationalization, calling up the vitriol with that classic combination of the pose of "clean hands" inevitably broken though by the barely contained, smug, blunt, adolescent glee of insinuated attack.
Elitist. He who grew up with a single mother. Who earned his academic progress through scholarships. Who turned down top law firms for the streets of Chicago.
No matter--the term itself will be enough to unleash the self-satisfied vitriolic scrawl--just enough of a peg to hang itself on to loose the traditional and safest prejudices, as always, so boldly feeling their unloosed anger as they ironically turn to the most familiar and comfortable shibboleths.
"Arrogance" equals acceptable racism here. One that can always be disclaimed. In other words, hiding truth behind a known facade, in the most common and seemingly pleasurable Republican tactic--fear inducing insinuation behind a known facade--and pleasure and pride in the manufacture of the known guise.
Wise up. Don't buy it. Turn such insinuated doubts away. If they need to manipulate you to stimulate your belief, question their motives.
If you didn't do it for Iraq--if you fell for the directed manipulation of fear, of the use of innuendo to stir undemonstrated and unrelated fears--you now have a second chance.
Do it now.
Cite:
Head of State
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-republicans-have-already-figured.html
June 24, 2008 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink