I see that Karl Rove’s PAC unveiled a preposterously deceptive ad yesterday claiming that Elizabeth Warren is unfit for the Senate because she’s….wait for it….too close to Wall Street. Yes, you read that right. Here on Earth Prime, of course, Warren is perhaps one of the financial industry’s most loathed figures. Saying she’s too close to Wall Street is sort of like saying Ralph Nader is too close to General Motors because, you know, he spent a whole year researching a book about the car industry.
So why choose such a comically outlandish attack? Well, keep in mind that Rove is famous for believing that you should always attack your opponent’s strongest points, not just their weakest. And obviously Warren’s whole reputation is based on being the Scourge of Wall Street™. So something had to be done about that.
Will it work? It seems a little too farfetched to me, even if Rove’s people do have the resources to saturate the airwaves with this stuff. Even Warren’s critics will have a hard time picking up the ball on this and running with it, and without a groundswell of echo chamber goodness it won’t have legs.
Still, it’s an interesting test of Rove’s thesis. If he can get away with this, it’s pretty good evidence that you can get away with anything.
