Welcome aboard, Mr. Roberts (Keith Olbermann)

[Jersey Devil]

NEW YORK -- Who knows if President Bush really did rush his nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court in order to knock the Karl Rove story off the front page. But if he did -- he did a poor job of it.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy theory and/or the conspiracy, the first 18 hours of Democratic reaction to the Roberts candidacy seems to be almost benign.

No hair-on-fire, “Save America!” response means no controversy.

No controversy means no headlines.

No headlines means -- we rejoin the Karl Rove story already in progress.

-snip-

...the Democrats may actually be smart enough to hold fire on this one and keep the good thing they’ve got going on Rove.

Everything I’ve heard since suggests the party leadership wants very much to give Roberts no more than a black-and-blue mark, and take no more than five minutes doing so.

More - http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

[LeftNYC]

1. Here is my favorite line...

Karl Rove is the Natalee Holloway of non-tabloid journalism. His story will stick around, whether or not politicians or reporters want it to, because people will watch.

Hell, we even did Karl Rove Puppet Theatre last night.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. They will not say one way or the other until they

do their reserach in the meantime Karl Rove is lots of fun

[gkhouston]

4. hey, let the Dems dig their dirt on Roberts and in the meantime

they can go to town on Rove. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Once they actually know something about Roberts, they can sear him to a crisp at the hearings, as appropriate. I don't see that there's a lot to be gained by broiling him prematurely.

[stray cat]

3. Bush is counting on dems and media to act like lemmings

or to chase the latest ball they have thrown.

We won't get any real answers on the nominee until the senate starts questioning him so in the meantime Rove and Iraq news all the time.

[Jersey Devil]

5. Point, set, match

Let's keep our eyes on the ball, err, Rove.

[MidnightWind]

6. Exactly. The problem with the media is that they can only focus on about

two stories at a time. So this leaves them with Supreme Court nominee and the Aruba business. We've got to keep them on message re Rove. Keith "gets" it!

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Exactly