8/23/04

Karl Rove is an utter fucking political genius.

(warning: This is a long post)

President Bush denounced campaign commercials aired by outside groups on Monday, including an ad that accuses John Kerry of lying about his combat record in Vietnam. "That ad and every other ad" run by such groups (the so-called "527" groups) have no place in the campaign, Bush said when asked about the commercial sponsored by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth that has roiled the race for the White House.

(BTW, that paragraph above is from the AOL article on the subject. Credit where credit is due.)

So, in effect, Bush says "take those 527 ads off the air". If Swift boat veterans for truth (two lies for the price of one) then removes the ad, then they can put pressure on the 527 groups that are against Bush to remove theirs. If the SBVT keeps their ad on, Bush can say, "well, I tried, but I don't have any control over these folks."

It's Win-Win for Bush. Like I said, Karl Rove is a genius.

But let's analyze this. Let's start with the fact that the Republicans have no control over SBVT.

Lets do some numbers. For one thing, how many men actually SERVED on these boats in Vietnam? I'm going to be generous and say there were 5000 of them, total (I have no idea how many--I'm pulling figures out of my ass--just like Rush does).

Now, lets assume that two-thirds of these guys are anti-Kerry (again, I'm being generous). That leaves us with about 3300 soldiers.

But wait. Kerry only served on the boats a few months. So lets reduce the number of Vets who actually served in the same area as Kerry by two-thirds. That leaves us with about 1,000 guys who were actually on ANY swift boat at the time Kerry was there.

But let's say this group is composed of about 500 ACTUAL swift boat veterans. Let's further say that there it costs roughly $5,000 a spot to air these ads (on average). Lets assume the spot airs 200 times a day in all the various markets. Doing the math, that's ONE MILLION DOLLARS A DAY! The means each of the 500 veterans in this group would have to put up $2000 A DAY to fund these ads. I don't know what these guys earn in their jobs, but that's FOUR MONTH'S NET PAY for me!

Now, let's assume that for every Vet in this group, there are 10 non-vets. That's 5000 members. That means they still need to produce $200 a day to pay for the ads. That's about what I take home in three days.

Never mind the fact that this whole excercise is a moot point, because most of the funding for SBVT comes from a major Republican donor.

No control over this group? Who do they think they're kidding?!