Perfect!

Glenzilla (Glen Greenwald) strikes again. I could not help but notice the right-wing talking heads lately rushing to Hillary's defense, dispensing all this heartfelt advice to her on how to beat Barack. You know it is a load of crap, but Greenwald comes up, as usual, with the perfect hypocrisy, in quotes, to show how the game is being played. (He is the king of Lexus-Nexus.) Hilarious.

Karl Rove, The Financial Times, December 2, 2007: "Memo to Obama":

First, stop acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way.

Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her. She offers you openings time and again but you do not take advantage of them. Sharpen your attacks and make them more precise.

Karl Rove, Newsweek, May 5, 2008: "Dear Senator Obama":

Stop the attacks. They undermine your claim to a post-partisan new politics. You soared when you seemed above politics, lost altitude when you did what you criticize. Attacks are momentarily satisfying but ultimately corrode your appeal.

So absurdly, both the political and media class -- including many Democrats -- insist on taking seriously Republican assertions like this about Democratic candidates, as though they're engaged in some good faith, generous, honest effort to critically evaluate them and are trying to help Democrats decide who the better candidate is. Is there anything less relevant than what Karl Rove thinks about the Democratic candidates and what his "advice" is for how they could be better? The fact that he offers completely contradictory "advice" to Obama in a matter of a few months ought to reveal what he is about....

None of this is to be taken seriously. Karl Rove's army, including those in the media who revere him, aren't objectively evaluating each Democratic candidate to decide which one is strongest, which one is best, what they ought to do to win, etc. Their goal, instead, is to demonize and weaken whomever the nominee is going to be. There's a preexisting media narrative that will be fulfilled no matter who the nominee is; it's the same one that is applied in every national election.