# What's Rove Gonna Spring On Us?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [October 20, 2004, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229 "2004-10-20T15:38:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/1 "2004-10-20T15:38:56Z")
This is really a poll, but it’s not on a “less-than-cosmic” topic, so I chose not to put it in IMHO. Also, feel free to debate my premise if you don’t want to contribute a juicy tidbit of your own.
Here we are less than two weeks from Election Day. If history is any indication, Karl Rove has something he’s going to let loose soon. The MO is that he breaks the story enough time before Election Day for it to gain momentum, but not enough time for a thorough debunking. Also, the “story” should attack Kerry’s greatest strength. It’ll be something big enough that on Election Day, all the pundits will be saying “Will the accusations of (…) cost John Kerry the election?”
Some of my guesses are below. Probably many or most of these things have already been said, but not loudly or by anyone respectable.
- Kerry sexually harassed someone
- Kerry cheated on his wife (bonus points for an illegitimate child, a coerced abortion, hush money, or a paramour of undesirable foreign extraction, especially French or Muslim)
- “Video” or “audio” of “Kerry” “saying” words to the effect of “I hate the American people and everything they stand for”.
- Kerry is an atheist
- Kerry donated money or otherwise supported a group linked to terrorism
- Kerry cheated on his taxes
- Kerry is gay (bonus points if he harassed a straight, Christian guy)
- Kerry was involved in a “fragging” in Vietnam
- “Video” or “audio” of “Kerry” “saying” he hates Jews, blacks or especially Hispanics. Bonus points if a racial slur is used.
and Rove’s favorite tactic,
- Some ridiculous and offensive but easily refutable attack on Bush, especially one which by implication attacks a widely favored belief of the electorate, like religion or patriotism, which “appears” to have originated with the Kerry campaign.
Remember, folks, the sky’s the limit here - we’re talking Karl Rove. What do you think he’s got up his sleeve? We’ll revisit this after the election to see who got it right.
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/2 "2004-10-20T15:41:55Z")
A search for “October surprise” brings up 130 threads on the SDMB.
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### Author:  [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/3 "2004-10-20T15:44:08Z")
I wish I had a guess, but I don’t.
Kerry has already weathered the Swift Boat ads, the “throwing away his medals,” Drudge’s rumors about intern troubles and Times-New-Roman-fontgate.
I can’t think of what’s left to use, although I’m sure Rove can.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/4 "2004-10-20T15:44:47Z")
> [@Munch](#):
>
> A search for “October surprise” brings up 130 threads on the SDMB.
Is that all? 😛
If there was really a surprise, I don’t think he’d have waiting this long. Maybe I’m wrong, but I know I’m tired of the speculation. If this is a light-hearted thing, cool, but I’m not sure.
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### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/5 "2004-10-20T16:05:27Z")
I think it’s going on now but you can’t see it. Things like tinkering with the voter registration rolls to disenfranchise select groups of voters. Things like tampering with the electronic ballot counting, or shorting the supply of ballots in key areas.
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### Author:  [@Blackacre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackacre)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/6 "2004-10-20T16:08:14Z")
Rove doesn’t have to “spring” anything on us, Kerry’s record speaks for itself. Note his steadily dwindling poll numbers.
BA
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/7 "2004-10-20T16:10:33Z")
> [@Blackacre](#):
>
> Rove doesn’t have to “spring” anything on us, Kerry’s record speaks for itself. Note his steadily dwindling poll numbers.
His what? 😛 Polls have them tied and a number of states are either tied or leaning one way by a statistically insignificant margin.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/8 "2004-10-20T16:12:40Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> Things like tampering with the electronic ballot counting. . …
Ah, but VoteWatch and Common Cause will be doing their own exit polling! [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=281514](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=281514)
Kids, can you say “Shevardnadze”? I knew you could! 🙂
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### Author:  [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/9 "2004-10-20T16:20:41Z")
What Rove probably has is a lie. The problem with lies in this election is that they are being debunked very, very quickly. Frex, the Swift Boat vets would ordinarily have been quite a coup for somebody who operates like Rove, but their lies got debunked so very, very quickly that they wound up not having much of an effect overall. Note there WAS a dip in Kerry’s numbers for a time, however, before the debunking got started.
Also note that after each of the debates the networks had fact checkers examining the candidates’ claims. Neither was able to get away with any whoppers.
What I think is that in about a week and a half we’ll hear an enormous whopper about Kerry from some difficult-to-reach-or-check source. The Pubbie noise machine will play it for all it’s worth, with hopes it result in a dip in Kerry’s numbers right about election day. We’ll see.
If Rove had anything serious and true, he’d have played it by now.
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/10 "2004-10-20T16:34:55Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#):
>
> Here we are less than two weeks from Election Day. If history is any indication, Karl Rove has something he’s going to let loose soon. The MO is that he breaks the story enough time before Election Day for it to gain momentum, but not enough time for a thorough debunking.
Your saying that in past campaigns he’s worked for, Karl Rove has released suprises of this nature just before the election? What are some examples?
I think a blatent lie might backfire on the BC04 though, the media will be fixated on the election, and if Rove has a reputation for actions like this in the past, they may react more sceptically then one would presume from the media reaction in elections past.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/11 "2004-10-20T16:39:46Z")
I’m surprised nobody has yet even mentioned the most obvious ploy of all: Bring out Osama bin Laden from that cell in Pakistan where they’ve been holding him for the past six months! 😃
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### Author:  [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/12 "2004-10-20T16:42:14Z")
[Somebody’s been reading Josh Marshall’s links](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green):
> [@](#):
>
> A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove’s client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign’s progress, had flyers printed up—absent any trace of who was behind them—viciously attacking See and his family. “We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people,” the staffer says. “You’d roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, ‘Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you’re with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn’t have your tags.’ So I borrowed a buddy’s car [and drove] down the middle of the street … I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I’d cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees.” The ploy left Rove’s opponent at a loss. Ingram’s staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order “to create a backlash against the Democrat,” as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. “They just beat you down to your knees,” Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove’s attacks. See won the race.
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### Author:  [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/13 "2004-10-20T16:42:33Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> I’m surprised nobody has yet even mentioned the most obvious ploy of all: Bring out Osama bin Laden from that cell in Pakistan where they’ve been holding him for the past six months! 😃
It’s not going to be that. As someone pointed out in another GD thread, if they were planning this then the Administration would have been talking bin Laden up for months now, saying how dangerous he is, how he’s a unique threat, al Qaeda would be broken without him, etc. etc.
Instead, they continue to downplay his importance.
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### Author:  [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/14 "2004-10-20T17:00:25Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#):
>
> Also note that after each of the debates the networks had fact checkers examining the candidates’ claims. Neither was able to get away with any whoppers.
Don’t hold your breath for [fact-checking](http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/001023.asp) to continue.
> [@Malodorous](#):
>
> Your saying that in past campaigns he’s worked for, Karl Rove has released suprises of this nature just before the election? What are some examples?
Upon preview, read the article **ElvisL1ves** linked to above.
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### Author:  [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/15 "2004-10-20T19:24:08Z")
> [@Munch](#):
>
> A search for “October surprise” brings up 130 threads on the SDMB.
“October Surprise” referred originally to speculation that Reagan got the Iranians to delay releasing the hostages until after the inauguration, so Carter wouldn’t get credit for it. That actually goes another level beyond what I’m talking about here. I’m just talking about Rove launching a serious but unsubstantiated allegation against Kerry at the right time. Not that Rove would be averse to a real October Surprise, mind you.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/16 "2004-10-20T19:26:30Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#):
>
> “October Surprise” referred originally to speculation that Reagan got the Iranians to delay releasing the hostages until after the inauguration, so Carter wouldn’t get credit for it.
No cite handy, but I think that’s a bit more than a speculation.
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### Author:  [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/17 "2004-10-20T19:29:37Z")
I predict a bump in the terror alert level within the next 48 hours.
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/18 "2004-10-20T19:30:48Z")
Thanks for the cite **ElvisL1ves**
Somewhere a year or two ago there was a list of possible Oct. suprises that Rove might be working on floating around. The best one was Killing Regan.
To bad the old guy went ahead of schedule.
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/19 "2004-10-20T19:37:44Z")
> [@minty green](#):
>
> I predict a bump in the terror alert level within the next 48 hours.
According to [this](http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct04/terrorist.Bush.ssl.html) study the bump in presidents approval after a rise in terror alert lasts about a week, so I’d say your too early. I’m guessing the first half of next week.
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-rove-gonna-spring-on-us/270229/20 "2004-10-20T20:00:39Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#):
>
> “October Surprise” referred originally to speculation that Reagan got the Iranians to delay releasing the hostages until after the inauguration, so Carter wouldn’t get credit for it. That actually goes another level beyond what I’m talking about here. I’m just talking about Rove launching a serious but unsubstantiated allegation against Kerry at the right time. Not that Rove would be averse to a real October Surprise, mind you.
Yet only 4 threads appear under the search for “october surprise hostage”. Regardless, my point is that this thread has been done, and it’s been done often - all under a variation of an “October surprise”. The term has obviously changed to fit the purposes of the 2004 Presidential Elections.
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