Rove--Obama a frail candidate

Times:

Karl Rove, who masterminded the last two Republican victories in presidential elections, is gazing with undisguised relish at the giant target being painted on Barack Obama's back before the next one.

In an interview with The Times yesterday, he described the likely Democratic nominee as a “frail” candidate, who represents the values of an out-of-touch liberal social elite and demonstrates “tone deafness” to the concerns of ordinary Americans.

“You have probably seen this kind of guy at London parties, trailing ash from a fashionable cigarette into the carpet and making snide remarks about someone ‘being an abominable bore’,” Mr Rove said.

He suggested that voters have not heard the last of Mr Obama’s recent comments at a San Francisco fund-raiser, where he suggested small town Pennsylvanians were clinging to guns and religion because they were “bitter”.

The candidate sounded, Mr Rove said, as if he was following in the footsteps of his anthropologist mother “reporting on the exotic species of voter he had encountered in some dark corner on the opposite side of the globe”.

All this is a far cry from just a few short weeks ago when Mr Obama’s soaring oratory — his promise to heal racial divisions or transcend the partisan politics of an older generation — had Republican strategists regarding him with shock and awe.

It is now the Democrats’ turn to worry. Mr Obama’s decisive defeat in this week’s Pennsylvania primary has been followed by whispers of alarm that they may end up with a candidate who is listing badly — even holed below the water line — just as he is about to cross the finishing line in his race with Mrs Clinton. His failure to win white working-class voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania — both certain to be important battlegrounds in November’s general election — has raised doubts about his fitness for the fight against John McCain. He sometimes appears drained by his fight with Mrs Clinton, a woman 14 years older than him, taking time off the campaign trail this week and setting himself a light schedule for the coming days.

Whereas he once energised rallies with the chant, “Fired up! Ready to go!” he now complains about feeling tired and the length of primary season, or says he wants to go home to see his young family.

If Mr Obama loses again in Indiana on May 6, then panic will spread through the party....

...

His scorn for Mr Obama was almost palpable as he described how the candidate had developed a habit of “parsing” when faced by criticism or complaining about rough treatment as he did after last week’s TV debate against Mrs Clinton.

This makes him look like a whiner, Mr Rove said. “She has been getting tough with him — but it's not as tough as it will get from all sorts of places in a general election.”

Rove also suggested that Obama go back to the Senate between now and the election and thy to accomplish something on a bipartisan basis. I think the chances of that are remote. It is a nifty little trap if Obama were desperate enough to try it. I think he will go on dodging the media and debates.