Document:Leaked Karl Rove email
★ Start a Discussion about this document
The leaked Karl Rove email
"Anonymous" has struck again, this time leaking a confidential internal directive from Karl Rove's shadowy, billionaire-funded American Crossroads GPS outfit. It allows a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Rove machine. Daily Kos is specifically mentioned more than once. I have posted the email here in its entirety. It's pretty chilling stuff.
Aug. 24, 2011
From: KR
To: All Internet Operatives and Interns
Re: Internet Operations -- For Immediate and Aggressive Implementation
CONFIDENTIAL -- EYES ONLY
Hello Gang,
You've all been working hard, and it's paying off. Obama's numbers are plummeting as I type this. Congratulations all around. But we can't afford to be complacent now.
I just want to briefly go over a few Mission Points with you.
1. Main mission: Infiltrate all liberal web sites, posing as disaffected liberals with liberal-sounding user names, icons and signatures. (Reference Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, FDR, Smedley Butler, Bill Clinton, etc.)
2. Express. Disappointment. With. Obama. (Whining pays double!) (jk!)
3. Push primary challenge. Push third party. Push Green. Push Socialist. Push write-in voting. Push non-voting to "send a message."
4. Effective memes/talking points:
"Obama is a DINO."
"Obama is no different than a Republican."
"Obama has sold us out."
"It feels good to vote your conscience."
"It feels good to stick to your principles."
"Don't be trapped into voting for the lesser of two evils."
"We need to punish Obama and the Democrats by not voting."
"We'd be better off with a Republican in the White House."
"Obama is a war-mongering, torturing, corporatist shill."
I simply cannot emphasize this point enough: No meme is too extreme or radical. "Obama is worse than Bush!" "Obama is a war criminal!" Remember: the reader thinks he is reading the opinion of a fellow liberal. It's all about peer suggestibility, people. Keep expanding the Overton Window. The more you push a radical notion, the more likely a slightly less radical notion becomes acceptable. Someone else said it this way: "The bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe it."
So take it over the top. Absolutely nothing is outside the realm of plausibility. "Obama is an alien from the planet Negron." I like it!
The libs are disappointed that Obama hasn't turned America into a socialist paradise by now, but they're lazy and spoiled, not savvy and proactive like us. They think that by whining on a liberal web site they're engaging in some sort of "activism." They're "holding Obama's feet to the fire." They actually believe that DC policymakers or their staffers somehow have the time to read every ridiculous liberal blog. They don't get it that the only ones reading their whiny little rants are--wait for it--other liberals. So they're actually doing a whole lot of heavy lifting for us with all their dis-motivating buzz-kill, and we want to encourage them as much as possible. When your enemy is engaged in a circular firing squad, pass them the ammo!
Look, we suckered all those nutjob Christian fundies out of their votes and their money. LIberals are almost as easy to fool!
You've done great work so far. At this point, many of the liberal blog sites are virtually indistinguishable from RedState. (And can you imagine us on RedState trashing our own candidate? Riiiight.) On most liberal sites, anyone praising Obama is hounded and laughed out of town. Seeya later, blackwaterdog! We, with the help of the libs, have made it uncool to approve of or admit to liking Barack Obama on a liberal web site! Obama-trashing is now in vogue! Is this a great country, or what?!
Remember, in 2000, the Greens helped us put George in the White House by chanting that Al Gore was the same as Dubya! That George W. Bush was the same as the biggest liberal around! And libs bought that! They've obviously got a serious masochistic streak, so let's hand them a whip! (Can you imagine what America would be like today if we'd had that commie wuss Al Gore in the White House for eight years? Gives me goosebumps!)
The Internet was liberals' most effective weapon against us, for spreading lies and motivating other libs to vote and volunteer and donate, but not any more! Now the only effect of liberal blog sites is to sap enthusiasm and deter liberals from voting, period. We have monkey-wrenched our enemy's strength and turned it into a liability. The Republican Party owes Karl's Keyboard Kommandoes a huge debt of gratitude. You were instrumental in keeping Democrats home last November, and look what happened: we took back the House! I only wish I could thank you all in person. Mmmwahhh!
I know most of you work at home, but here at Crossroads I sometimes hear you guys yelling across your cubicles. "Hey, rec me on Kos! I'm owning those liberal schmucks! That's another Prius-load of Dims staying home! Spurn, baby, spurn! It's a beautiful thang!"
Gotta love that energy!
But we can't let up now. Now is the time to work even harder to sow and fertilize discontent out there in lib-land. The debates have begun and soon a front-runner will emerge for the libs to focus on and sling their mud at, instead of their own guy. (Go Ricky! Either or both! The Ricky/Ricky ticket! Anybody but that grotesque, hideous beotch from the Klondike!)
If Obama manages to steal a second term, he could be an unfettered loose cannon and inflict irreparable damage on our Republic. Two words: Supreme. Court. We just can't afford to let Obama pack the SCOTUS with liberal activist judges.
The long-overdue Citizens United decision means that finally our friends in business will no longer be muzzled from speaking out politically, so now our voices will have the full force of our resources behind them. Here at Crossroads we're poised to spend $20 million for ad campaigns spreading the truth, and the sky's the limit.
And we also have to acknowledge the work of our fellow patriots at the RNC and Heritage and CFG and AEI, etc., and all the private grassroots blog-warriors out there as well, such as the excellent Advantage Consultants. You guys are our Republican Underground, freedom fighters prosecuting our mission in the trenches on a daily basis. And don't think we don't recognize your commendable job of scrubbing all the filthy liberal lies out of Wikipedia.
Here are some helpful answers to your Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: Some libs are wise to us. A Rand Paul staffer got caught on Daily Kos last year. What if I am called out as a mole or troll?
A: No problem; actually an opportunity. Simply accuse the accuser of being a troll for Obama and the DNC, of trying to stifle dissent. (Libs are suckers for that kind of stuff.)
Say, "It's not a crime to criticize the president!" Or, "So I'm not allowed to say anything bad about Obama?" It's a straw man that works every time. Try this: "Nobody's gonna shut me up! I'm gonna keep on speaking out! Attica! Attica!"
Q: What do I do if the libs confront me with Obama's accomplishments? What if they start rattling off all the liberal crap he's foisted on the American people?
A: Just come back with the "warmongering corporatist torturer" bit (I know--he's a piker, he sucks at it, but some of them will actually believe that). Mere laughing dismissal is often very effective. Usually all it takes is an LOL. Call your attackers "Obamabots." Accuse them of mindless fawning, of worshipping their "saviour." Dismiss the positive, accentuate the negative. Reference Paul Krugman and Glenn Greenwald. We know Obama hosed us on the debt ceiling deal, for example, but the libs think he sold out. That's the spin we want to push. And it won't hurt to ramp up the vitriol and nastiness. We want to make every liberal site an unpleasant place to visit.
Q: What if some of this criticism does reach Obama's radar and he starts going even more leftist or tries to kick Republican butt? Won't that backfire on us?
A: Nothing would be better! Bring it, O man! We've already managed to inform a big chunk of the electorate that Obama is in truth an angry, racist, America-hating communist. If we can goad him to the point where he stops playing rope-a-dope with us and starts acting like the thuggish, belligerent, socialist dictator we know him to be in reality, we win. We want nothing more than for him to lose his temper and get all pushy and uppity (I love that word!) and uncompromising. Heck, if he gets uppity enough, we might have some traction on an impeachment move. Admittedly, it's frustrating that he has kept his cool no matter what we throw at him. His phony act of being so consistently goddamned adult and steady and reasonable and sober and bipartisan is what has made all our people in comparison look like stubborn, childish, maudlin, jingoistic, perverted, hypocritical, narcissistic, grandstanding, demented, ignorant, freak-show corporatist whores who don't give a shit about America. And they're not. Not at all. Nope. Not all of them. No way, Hozay!
Q: Is our work really that effective? I mean, how many people actually read these liberal blogs?
A: Your work is very effective, or we wouldn't be paying you. True, the people who visit these liberal sites might be a tiny percentage of the population, but they are the most political, the most likely to get involved in organizing, volunteering and fundraising. In other words, the core. If we can raise enough doubts among the core, and constantly reinforce those doubts through peer suggestibility, we will in essence drive a stake through the heart of the Democrat party. And that is a good day's work, my friends!
Q: He got Osama bin Laden. How the hell do we spin that?
A: Easy: "Obama assassinated a foreign leader without a trial." "Obama should be tried for murder before an international court of law." "They didn't even read bin Laden his Miranda rights, or offer him counseling!"
People, the bottom line is that I don't care what you do, or what it takes. We get it. The libs don't. We know it's all about votes, and the money and enthusiasm and volunteering that gets votes. The guy who goes to the White House in 2013 will have either an R after his name, or a D. Do we want the party of Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi and Sherrod Brown in our house, or do we want the party of Grover Norquist, Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers? So, all eyes on the prize, which is: Keeping those godless, America-hating libs away from the voting booths!
We want to make this the new theme song of the Democrat party:
(To the tune of the In-N-Out jingle)
Sit it out!
Sit it out!
That's what a Dem-ocrat is
All about!
Onward to the Hundred-Year Majority!
And remember: The month's top poster wins a dream lunch with KR!
Yours in liberty, free enterprise, and purity of purpose,
KR
8:26 PM PT: Wow, 50 HRs and counting. I stepped into a nest of rattlesnakes, I guess. I used to love this site years ago, but now I'm sick over what it has become. All I tried to do was hold up a mirror, and maybe some here didn't like what they saw. When so much of the work here is so closely aligned with that of our enemies (yes, the Republican party is my enemy), then I think we need to question what effect we're having. Of course this is interpreted by some (defensively, I feel) as an admonition to stop criticizing President Obama, and that is completely missing the point. We are talking mostly to each other here, so a constructive purpose of dissent on DK would be to rally others to action. What action are we rallying our fellow Kossacks to take?
8:51 PM PT: My greatest disappointment: Apparently no one got the reference of "Spurn, baby, spurn!" Didn't anyone here see "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"?
ORIGINALLY POSTED TO MY LEFT BEHIND ON SAT AUG 27, 2011 AT 12:56 PM PDT.
