The Karl Rove School

The political world is full of beginnings. Karl Rove, who orchestrated victories for both Bushes and a guru of Republican strategy, has demonstrated a certain penchant toward his adversaries.

His first shock tactic was to intercept a serious invitation to a campaign launch by a Democratic candidate for treasurer in Illinois and to transform it into an invitation, given to all of the region’s tramps, to a huge party with “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time.” Evidently, the Democratic candidate found himself embarrassed when he looked up to see all those characters in his fancy residence!

That was in 1970, 42 years ago. One can say that Karl Rove, who accompanied George Bush to the White House and his son W., first as the governor of Texas and then to the presidency twice, has a lot of experience with dirty tricks. Thanks to this time, he has become a living legend American conservative ranks. But his renown has since crossed over the border a while ago to be venerated by Canadian conservatives who follow his teachings like gospel. They fall over themselves to hear his rare conferences in Canada and go regularly to the United States in order to attend his seminars on political organization inspired by “Rovian Campaigns,” an expression coined by the man himself.

The “free beer, free food, girls” anecdote from Chicago is amusing and rather childish (although the affair benefitted the Democrat, who looked like such a good guy for welcoming everyone) but Karl Rove and his apostles didn’t stop there.

In his biography entitled “Courage and Consequence” (published in 2010 and from where I pulled the Chicago anecdote and the following information), Rove makes the case (convincingly!) that in politics, information is power. He writes clearly, “I have enormous respect for Net Nerds, Application Junkies, Tech Heads and Data Dudes.” He adds, in his golden “Rovian” rules, that a good campaign must give all simple and available technological tools to its volunteers. In rereading this passage, I couldn’t help but think about Pierre Poutine, who bought a cell phone and left some automated messages …

The ties between the Republicans and the Conservatives in Canada aren’t ideological. There also exist some tangible ties, some exchanges, some contacts.

The Toronto firm RMG (The Responsive Marketing Group), engaged for several years by the conservatives, also has some good business with the Republican Party, thanks to its subsidiary Target Outreach.

Some former employees of RMG at Thunder Bay, in Ontario, have confirmed to the Toronto Star that they were asked to direct voters toward the wrong voting stations during the last ballot on May 2.

RMG’s head of marketing, Stewart Braddick, has worked for the conservatives in Canada since the Brian Mulroney era. He has also been involved in campaigns for former Ontario prime minister Mike Harris. In a political party, Braddick is what one would call a “fixture.”

Stewart Braddick has also worked for the Belinda Stronach campaigns on the direction of the new Conservative Party in 2004 and those of Tom Long at the head of the defunct Canadian Alliance in 2000. During that campaign the media had discovered that hundreds of Tom Long supporters … never existed in Gaspesie.

After the creation of the new conservative party led by Stephen Harper in 2004, ROMG has obtained contracts in order to amass, conserve and analyze the data on conservative voters at the end of elections.

The firm RMG has constituted more the register called “Constituency Information Management System (CIMS),” the rich bank of donations for conservatives on the voters.

All of this accumulated information on voters (how strange for a party that abolished handgun registration and an elaborate census because it constituted an attack on privacy, but that’s another matter) serves to document where conservative sympathizers are. Useful, notably in order to get out the vote. Here we are in political territory.

“Get out the vote”: that’s one thing (every party does it, and not always with morals or elegance); but keeping opponents from voting, that’s another.

With “Putingate,” we move from political tactics to go into electoral fraud. Harper conservatives just push back the limits of the expression “the end justifies the means.”

His Canadian students may yet make Karl Rove proud.