What Is Karl Rove Up To Now

After taking great pain to build Barack Obama up and provide advice to him about how to beat Hillary Clinton, Karl Rove is now seeking to cast dispersion upon Obama by assailing him with pointed criticism which amounts to him being inept in running a smart campaign.  After Obama's lost to Clinton in New Hampshire, Rove in a Wall Street Journal article attempts to use reverse psychology to bait Obama into running an even more spirited negative campaign against Clinton.

To the unsuspecting, it's a brilliant strategy.  But to the skeptical, it's hard to believe that Rove suddenly views Obama as "lazy" and reminiscent of "Adlai Stevenson".  Rove wants to ensure that Clinton and Obama are engaged in a ferocious dogfight throughout the campaign season that will leave both candidates with irreconcilable and irreversible damage going into November.  Rove the ever sly instigator also claims that Hillary "lets her [dislike for Obama] show" by mentioning Obama last in her New Hampshire victory speech.  What Rove fails to mention is that Hillary listed her opponents in what appeared to be reverse order of viability evidenced by her reference to John Edwards just prior to Obama.

It will be interesting to see if Clinton and Obama strategists are smart enough to see through the fog and avoid the latest Republican booby trap designed to provide sound bite material to fuel the GOP attack ads that await the eventual Democratic Presidential nominee.

Sidebar: Democrats will find it hard to convince discerning voters that negative attacks are unique to the Republican playbook, if the only real difference is that the Republican playbook is red and the Democratic playbook is blue.