In all fairness, Rove also hit Barack Obama on his ads.

Anybody else notice how difficult it was for Rove to admit that McCain has not been truthful. He stuttered, clearly trying to not hurt his candidate.

Also, anybody else notice how he said that he hopes that an ``there ought to be an adult who says ..''

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/14/ rove-both-campaigns-ads-are-over-the-top /

Now if a 73 yr-old person is not an adult, can we expect him to run an election in an adult manner.

the McCain camp has run which are lies are typically run NOT by the candidate themselves but by 527s.

Remember Bush himself rarely ran distorted negative ads.  Instead it was the 527s that ran those kinds of ads.

What's remarkable is that McCain is running a campaign as if there were 2 weeks to go and they are behind.  Are they just going to keep this up until November?

Oh Please everything Rove states is with a reason; he is not worried about anyone being to malicious.  He said this to enable further cognitive dissonance amongst the audience.  The man should NOT be quoted unless it is when discussing how to best run a campaign & win - he has practically outlined that for us all.

Always two there are, a master and the apprentice.

Yoda

Sounds like 'Master' Rove is giving his apprentice Schmidt a slap on the back of the head.

Why the hell would anyone celebrate Rove's supposed admission?

The McCain campaign has not overplayed its hand. They have not prematurely gone into desperation mode. Karl is not reprimanding his acolyte. If I had to guess, I'd say McCain's internals are likely just fine.

What is happening here is a deliberate, orchestrated part of the GOP game plan, as this AP story, "Republicans Fault Both Campaigns for negative Ads" makes clear:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080915/ap_o n_el_pr/campaigns_negativity;_ylt=AqZIDY Vn4ndaYE4zqR2Xy0d34T0D

In a coordinated fashion, Rove, Guiliani, et al are throwing sand in the refs' (and the public's) eyes to obsruce the one-sidedness of their own malfeasance.

The current pivot began late last week when McCain argued that all of this terrible nastiness on both sides could have been avoided if only Obama had done the decent thing and agreed to the town hall meetings. The intent, as ludicrous as it is, is get people thinking that both campaigns were out of control over the last couple of weeks, and it was all mean old Obama's fault. If Obama takes the bait, McCain will back off the throttle maybe five percent as the right-wing 527s step in to ratchet up the sliming. If Obama ignores the challenge, McCain will say "see, he doesn't respect the American people enough to give them town halls, we have no choice but to campaign this way!"

If you think Rove and Schmidt haven't gamed out every day, and every play of the next seven weeks, you're as foolish as they are cynical. Their plan is to smear Obama into paste, to make him an object of scorn and derision, to crack open the earth and let it swallow him up. Even if their internals are better than what we're seeing in the public polls, these people will keep grinding their boot into Obama's neck until they decapitate the poor bastard. For all their dishonesty, you've got to give them one thing: they tell you what they are going to do, they even tell you how, and then they do it.

The only question left is, will we let them?

     As a professional liar, Rove quite rightly feels that "this business is being ruined by amateurs." It's not that McCain is lying any more than he was a few weeks ago--it's just that his lies are more obvious, and more reasily exposed.