Karl Rove, as you may know, is George Bush's chief campaign strategist. I have heard that he has done some really underhanded things in previous campaigns, like bugging his own offices and then "discovering" the bugs and making them known to the press, implying the election opponent must have put them there.

Josh Marshall, in his Talking Points Memo blog, talks about an article in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, in which some insiders to Rove's previous campaigns talk about his strategies. This entry in Marshall's blog is really a worthwhile read. You can see it here. I may buy The Atlantic Monthly to see the article he talks about.

Actually, it really disgusts me that the President of the United States would use somebody like this in his re-election campaign. It makes me wonder if both the Swift Boat Vets and the Dan Rather/CBS false documents were Rove's fabrications. Those both fit his MO of deceitfully directly attacking one of the opponent's strong points and one of his candidate's weak points. Hmmm!

As reported by Eric Alterman in Altercation, a really great quote of James Carville: “Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!"

It turns out that even though the Republicans have apparently succeeded in painting Kerry as a flip-flopper, Bush has flip-flopped as much, maybe more.See John F. Harris' analysis in the Washington Post.

And as far as Kerry flip flopping on Iraq . . .
The San Francsco Chronicle has an article by Marc Sandalow, their Washington Bureau Chief, with the following headlines:
NEWS ANALYSIS
Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts
Kerry always pushed global cooperation, war as last resort.
In it, he says:

"Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation."

The complete article can be seen here.

My opinion is that some flip-flopping needs to be a fact of life in political office due to the way things change and the evolving complexities of many issues.I can't understand why Bush is making such a big thing about it.Maybe he just doesn't have much else he can say about Kerry.

And some other quotes . . .

"Like all weak men he laid an exagerated stress on not changing one's mind"
-W. Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage XXXIX

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance