Karl Rove double dog dares Sarah Palin to get into the Presidential race.

Courtesy of Mediaite:

“I’m mystified,” he admitted, “that she’s all upset about this, that I’m somehow trying to sabotage her campaign, sabotage her in some way, and how dare I speculate on her future.” Rove also responded angrily that “if she doesn’t want to be speculated about as a potential presidential candidate, there’s an easy way to end the speculation,” yet whenever the issue comes up, “she says ‘I haven’t made a decision.” Rove concluded adding a jab at Palin’s lust for attention, calling it a “sign of enormous thin skin that if we speculate about her, she gets upset, and I suspect that if we didn’t speculate about her, she’d be upset about it and trying to find a way to get us to speculate about her.” 

Van Susteren tried to bring Rove back from that precipice, asking him to instead “reflect on the media” and the fact that they continue covering her. Rove admitted that she was “a potentially big factor in the presidential election,” and that “if she were to get in, she’d be a contender.” That said, Rove concluded by calling Palin thin-skinned another two times before the segment ended– abruptly, without a goodbye, cut into by a “news break” that likely could’ve waited the extra three seconds. 

I cannot believe I am digging on Rove for ANYTHING, but I love watching him call Palin's bluff!

I also love watching Greta scrambling like crazy to make sure that nobody thinks she actually believes that Snowdrift Snooki is behind the response to Rove, even though, as Rove himself points out, it is obvious that she was.

One has to wonder how Palin will respond to this constant poking from Rove?

She can't really just ignore Rove, as it appears that he is just getting started.  But the only way she can REALLY respond is to jump in or completely bow out, neither of which I think she is willing to do yet.

However according to this article Palin's support for even a fake run at the nomination may have already dried up.

(H/T to Sarah Jones at Politicususa.)

Just a reminder from 2004 of who the Republicans are, and what they are capable of doing to gain, or hold on to, power.

Karl Rove and George Bush patting each other on the back for fucking over the American people.

Courtesy of Truthout:

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

Additionally, the filing contains the contract signed between then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Connell's company, GovTech Solutions. Also included that contract a graphic architectural map of the Secretary of State's election night server layout system. 

Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to "input data" and thus alter the results of Ohio's 2004 election. Spoonamore responded: "Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not."

Spoonamore explained that "they [SmarTech] have full access and could change things when and if they want."

Arnebeck specifically asked "Could this be done using whatever bypass techniques Connell developed for the web hosting function." Spoonamore replied "Yes."

This is the kind of thing to keep in mind when you are hearing the Teabaggers talk about "taking their country back."

The GOP are the ones who rigged not one, but TWO, elections and took the choice away from the voters.  It was the Republicans who lied to the American people in order to start an unnecessary war in Iraq. And it was the Republicans who put this economy into the tailspin that we are still trying to recover from today.

So exactly WHICH party is the one that stole this country away from its people?

And our President is supposed to negotiate with these unscrupulous bastards?

Palin supporters are STILL clinging to the idea that their idol can fundamentally change how a campaign is run and still win the GOP nomination. There is a word for people like this, but if I say it I will be accused of attacking Trig again.

Courtesy of Politicususa:

Greta Van Sustern asked Rove if Palin could run an unconventional campaign. Rove answered, “Her people think so. They’ve talked with people about it, whom I’ve talked to, and they’ve been very explicit about it — that she doesn’t need to go to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, press the flesh and go to all these local events in order to cultivate the local leadership. She can talk to people over that. She doesn’t need to cultivate the fundraisers and the bundlers, because her mere presence in the race will generate the cash needed for the campaign. She doesn’t need to do things in a normal way to lay out a message. She can do it on Facebook. She can do it by having a friendly producer release a movie that is seen in theaters, and that’s going to be the interesting thing.”

Rove then issued a warning about the Palin strategy, “I frankly think that the people in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, there are some of the niceties that you ignore at your own peril. There is a reason why, these people in the early states take it very seriously, and they expect to see you, be able to hear up close, be able to ask you questions, be able to see you multiple times before they make a commitment, and we’ll see if that old rule remains the same.”

He said that Palin is making it clear that if she runs, she is doing it by her rules. Nobody should be surprised that Sarah Palin wouldn’t want to hit the campaign trail, but the real stunner is that she arrogantly believes that she doesn’t have to fundraise either. She seriously thinks that the day she announces the floodgates are going to open and millions of dollars will pour in.

The real problem with the people who support a Palin run, besides their obvious lack of intellect, is that they keep confusing media attention with voter support.

Yes, if Sarah Palin decides to announce her candidacy she WILL receive a ton of attention from the media. And she will also attract a rather significant initial infusion of cash for her campaign. (If her sycophants aren't in the poorhouse after buying dozens of tickets to her crappy movie and several copies of Bristol's book that is.)

But then what?

She clearly cannot stand on stage and engage in a debate with the other GOP contenders, so she will have to find some reason avoid that. (Perhaps she could get a note from Michele Bachmann's doctor?)

She cannot appear on any cable, or network, news program to answer REAL questions from an interviewer who is not paid to resist the urge to embarrass her, so she will have to avoid that.

Every single potential scandal about her, including babygate, will be revisited by the journalists who, having no access to her, will feel the need to investigate them aggressively in order to answer voter's questions about her worthiness to be the President.

And finally the people who have agreed not to reveal the things they know about her, in the GOP and around Alaska, unless she decided to run for President, will suddenly start showing up on news programs all across the country, and telling tales that NO amount of public relations management will be able to suppress.

In other words, it would be insane for Sarah Palin to decide to run for President, but as we all know....

Personally I believe that Palin is currently caught in an internal war between her fantasy of who she is and what she can do, and the reality that keeps slipping through the cracks of her giant wall of denial and reminding her of her devastating limitations and how aggressive the press will be in revealing them.

That taken into account with the fact that her pool of supporters has diminished to the size of a mud puddle exposed to the Arizona sun, would seem to indicate that she will not run for office, and might instead work overtime to think up a viable excuse that will keep her supporters sending her money while she decides which candidate might be desperate enough to promise her some cushy appointment to their cabinet in exchange for her now relatively useless endorsement.