[quote="PozzoI don't know. I have to go play poker...[/quote]

smartest thing said by anyone in this entire thread

Well, let's make a list of the people whose political careers have been destroyed over literally nothing....

Off the top of my head....

John Kerry, bad joke intentionally misinterpreted
Howard Dean, scream that really wasn't that loud
Trent Lott, probably not all that racist but everybody pretended to believe he was
Al Gore, everybody pretended he was a liar
Newt Gingrich, I don't remember why he was forced out
Gary Hart, ok this guy was a little messed up in the head

(Tom Delay? No, he really deserved it)
(Dan Rostenkowski? No, he really deserved it, went to jail)

Politicians on both sides are getting clobbered. Some of the above are better people than others. They're in both parties, so maybe it's even-steven in a sense.

But Karl Rove in particular has made a career out of this kind of thing. There's nobody comparable to him on the Democratic side of things. So I think it's a little worse coming from the Repubs. Maybe a ratio of 65-35, 60-40.

Karl Rove episode #1: it's the 2000 Republican presidential primary, right after John McCain won in New Hampshire and George Bush, led by Karl Rove, had to win South Carolina or his campaign was finished. Rumors were 'unleashed' that John McCain was mentally unbalanced as a result of his imprisonment as a POW in North Vietnam, that his wife was a drug addict and that his adopted Bangladeshi child was illegitimate, the result of McCain consorting with a black prostitute.

Karl Rove episode #2: In 1994, a Democratic Alabama judge was hit by another 'whisper campaign' claiming that he was a pedophile. This was a guy who had spent his life working for abused children. The judge won that election but declined to run again. Rove led the campaign for the judge's opponent. In a November, 2004, article by Joshua Green in The Atlantic Monthly, an Alabama political operative is quoted: "What Rove does...is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship."