http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1697094,00.htmlKarl Rove, whose questionable role in the disclosure of a CIA agent’s name has plunged the White House into a scandal, is no stranger to political dirty tricks. As a student activist in 1970, when it was dangerously unfashionable to be a right-wing Republican, the man who would become the most powerful conservative strategist in America hit on a wizard wheeze to disrupt a Democratic party meeting in Chicago.
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Rove, now the White House deputy chief of staff and President George W Bush’s closest policy adviser, belonged at the time to Young Americans for Freedom, a right-wing group that cast itself as the conservative antithesis of the long-haired, drug- using peaceniks of the left. Yet Rove’s disdain for the loose morals of anti-war hippies did not prevent him from posing as a Democrat supporter and obtaining some of Dixon’s campaign stationery.
According to his biographers, James Moore and Wayne Slater, Rove then faked a revised invitation for the same place and time, but inserted a promise of “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing”. He distributed his work around hippie communes, rock concerts, soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless.
On the day of the Democrat’s party hundreds of unkempt freeloaders showed up, demanding their hot dogs and beer. Dixon won his election anyway, but Rove’s reputation was secured as a man who would stop at little to help his party get ahead.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1697094,00.html