Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

Rove's innovative approach to campaign strategy propelled him rapidly up the ladder
to the top of the state Republican party, where he orchestrated the most complete takeover of
Texas since Sam Houston routed Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. (Sam Houston was
later killed at the Alamo by terrorists.)
By 2000, Rove knew how to steal an election without leaving any fingerprints. According
to McCain's then campaign manager, Rick Davis, Rove had a seasoned team of character
assassins al ready in place, including Warren Tompkins (another Atwater disciple) and
former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed. Davis told me that Reed later
claimed "I was the one who delivered South Carolina for W."
Phone banks, flyers, e-mails, church pulpits, and, in one undocumented case, telepathy-all
these were used as "Weapons of McCain Destruction," as Bill Schneider might have
called them on CNN's Inside Politics. One such e-mail came from Bob Jones University Professor
Richard Hand (Rhand@BJU.edu), who wrote to fellow South Carolinians that McCain
"chose to sire children without marriage." When Hand was told on CNN that there was no
evidence Senator McCain had fathered illegitimate children, Hand, displaying the intellectual
rigor for which Bob Jones University is justifiably esteemed worldwide, said, "That's a universal
negative. Can you prove that?"
You may remember that it was at Bob Jones University that George W Bush kicked
off his South Carolina campaign. The ultra-fundamentalist school was famously anti-Roman
Catholic and had a quirky policy against interracial dating. "We had to send a message –
fast—and sending him there was the only way to do it," Tompkins would later say. Bush was
criticized nationally for not addressing the school's ban on interracial dating. You know who I
think would have criticized their interracial dating policy? Thomas Jefferson.
Bush won South Carolina, went on to capture the Republican nomination, and came
within a hair's breadth of winning the election.
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The following scene is excerpted from The Big Heist, my novelization of the Republican conspiracy
to steal the election in Florida. The book was inspired by Bill O'Reilly's Those Who
Trespass and Jeffrey Toobin's Too Close to Call: The Thirty-six Day Battle to Decide the
2000 Election. Note: While the Republicans did send lobbyist Mac Stipanovich to baby-sit