Hats Off To The GOP Dirty Tricks Committee

[Knockwurst]

I want to congratulate the GOP with all sincerity on their incredibly effective campaign tactics, the likes of which we haven't seen since Lee Atwater's Willie Horton ads (with the possible exception of Ed Rollins paying off African-American churchs to suppress the vote in Christine Whitman's gubernatorial campaign).

The Swift Boat "controversy" is a crowning achievement for Karl Rove -- an incredible display of ingenuity -- a body blow that Kerry is still reeling from like a drunken sailor.

Just when it looked like Bush could not possibly recover from events in Iraq and a sluggish economy at home, along came the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Calling into question events that could no longer be confirmed one way or the other 30+ years after the fact, the Swifities attacked Kerry where he thought he was strongest.

An added touch of brilliance was starting with a modest $500,000 advertising budget, so that the Kerry campaign would initially ignore them hoping the story would go away, only to have the GOP-friendly cable outlets such as Fox pick up the story and run with it, providing wall to wall coverage of the controversy the likes that advertising couldn't buy.

All the while, Bush/Cheney et al. profess nothing but admiration for Kerry's service record. Now that Kerry is finally responding about 14 newscycles too late by attacking Bush/Cheney's service or lack of it, he looks like some wildly frothing maniac maligning our President, who has offered nothing but kind words about Kerry's service.

And now they're moving from his wartime activities to his anti-war activities after he returned from his service. They're changing gears on Kerry faster than you can say NASCAR Dads. They got me so I can't stand the guy, and I'm voting for him.

If they pull this off (and it looks like they will), this will go down as one of the greatest tactical displays of all time. F'ing Incredible.

And please spare me the Oh-the-GOP-doesn't-have-any-connection-to-the-SBVT-ads bs. I'm congratulating you, it was a helluva job. I only wish the Dems had it in 'em.