crowded hawser

Mr. Rove remains a dominant adviser to President Bush, administration officials say. But outside the White House, as Mr. Bush’s popularity has waned, and as questions have arisen among Republicans about the White House’s political acumen, the party’s candidates are going their own way in this difficult election season far more than they have in any other campaign Mr. Rove has overseen.

Some are disregarding Mr. Rove’s advice, despite his reputation as the nation’s premier strategist. They are criticizing Mr. Bush or his policies. They are avoiding public events with the president andMr. Rove.

Influential conservative commentators have openly broken with the White House, calling into question the continued enthusiasm of evangelicals, economic conservatives and other groups that Mr. Rove has counted on to win elections. Some Republicans are ignoring Mr. Rove’s efforts to hold the party together on issues like immigration and Iraq.

In a reflection of this difficult environment, the White House has decided to concentrate nearly all its resources on the critical fight to keep control of Congress, party officials said, largely stepping away from the governors’ races, at least for now.

In Michigan last week, Dick DeVos, a Republican candidate for governor and a longtime contributor to Mr. Bush, startled national Republican Party leaders with a searing attack on the president for failing to meet with the leaders of the Big Three automakers. “We’re being ignored here in Michigan by the White House, and it has got to stop,” Mr. DeVos said.

That would be Dick "huge Republican donor married to the Bush Pioneer who ran the Michigan Republican party during the most recent presidential election whose family is bankrolling the PR campaign for Our Fearless Leader's signature estate tax repeal" DeVos, whose meteoric rise in public life began when he was appointed head of Amway's international operations as a nineteen-year-old college dropout completely through merit despite the fact that his dad owned the company. Distance hell. I don't know how anyone tells them apart.

In the Ohio Senate race, Mr. Rove has found himself in a back-and-forth with Senator Mike DeWine. Mr. DeWine has at times resisted Mr. Rove’s counsel that he employ an unrelenting focus on terrorism, exhibiting what other Republicans described as ambivalence about a television commercial depicting the World Trade Center burning.

and how ambivalent was DeWine about that ad?

On the air in major Ohio markets since last Friday, the ad showed the towers, with the south building billowing smoke, which gradually drifts upward. In the video, the north tower, which was struck first on September 11, is undamaged.

"This particular image is impossible," says W. Gene Corley, a stuctural engineer who led the Federal Emergency Management Agency's building performance study of the World Trade Center after the attacks. Corley reviewed the ad at www.brownvotes.com for U.S. News. "The north tower was hit first, [so] the south tower could not be burning without the north tower burning." Corley says. "The smoke is all wrong." The day of the attacks, the plumes of ash were drifting to the southeast. "The smoke on 9/11 was never in a halo like that," he added.

DeWine's office acknowledged the error. "The senator was unaware that the image of the towers was a graphic representation and has instructed the campaign to replace the footage with a picture of the twin towers," his office said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

DeWine spokesman Brian Seitchik says the image of the burning towers in the ad was a still photo with computer-generated smoke added.

In a sign of how politically charged the issue of politicizing the September 11 attacks has become, DeWine's camp promised that a newly edited version would be produced immediately and released as early as Thursday.

ambivalent enough to rerelease the ad after it became a national embarassment is how ambivalent

The senator was notified Wednesday by a reporter at U.S. News & World Report that the image of the burning Twin Towers could not have depicted the actual event because the smoke was blowing the wrong way. He immediately ordered the image replaced with a photograph of the moment, his campaign said.

DeWine's campaign spokesman, Brian Seitchik, called the image in the original ad a "graphic representation," produced by the advertising production firm Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm.

"The senator thought it depicted the actual events of 9/11 and when he found out that wasn't the case, he wanted an actual picture used," Seitchik said. "I don't think it would be noticeable to the naked eye."

DeWine stood by the ad's message, but Brown's campaign expressed vindication.

"So it was doctored," said Brown spokeswoman Joanna Kuebler.

...

Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm did not immediately return calls seeking comment. The firm also produced the controversial Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004, which accused Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry of lying about his decorated Vietnam War record.

the unkindest cut of all, though, has got to be this

The White House said that Mr. Rove would consider an interview for this article if it were conducted off the record, with the provision that quotations could be put on the record with White House approval, a condition it said was set for other interviews with Mr. Rove. The New York Times declined.

Somewhere (I'm guessing somewhere warm) Kenny-boy Lay is having a good chuckle right now.