More blowback on the "60 Minutes" Rove story

I dropped by Romenesko to see if he had weighed in on the recent issues such as the New York Times' McCain story. Turned out he had news on the "60 Minutes" story about Rove's covert operations team.

A Press-Register editorial blasts the CBS show's "clumsy attempt to portray former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman as the victim of a Karl Rove-led conspiracy" and says "it was perversely fitting that '60 Minutes' fired a wild shot at Mr. Rove just a few days after The New York Times tried to out-tabloid the tabloids with a story suggesting a romantic link between Republican presidential candidate John McCain and an attractive blonde lobbyist."
(Romenesko)

Here's the conclusion of the editorial. Click the link at the end to read the whole thing.

Mr. Siegelman will not be exonerated by a politicized campaign in the press to convict Karl Rove of pulling the strings of dozens of puppets, including career prosecutors and other court officials. This sort of conspiracy-mongering hurts the reputation of journalists much more than it hurts Mr. Rove or helps former Gov. Siegelman.
(Mobile Press-Register)

*****

Rove attacking Hillary Clinton?

This column just didn't jibe with the talking points I'm being fed.

Is Republican strategist Karl Rove attacking Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton because he really wants to help her win the Democratic presidential nomination? Do Democrats seem paranoid when they suspect that he is? If so, as the saying goes, that doesn't mean somebody is not out to get them.

I have a slightly different theory. As Rove departs his long-held post at the ear of President Bush, I think his recent bash-Hillary tour of media interviews is the first Band-Aid in his attempts to patch up the damage he left behind, both to his party's prospects and his president's legacy.

After all, with Republicans largely dispirited and in disarray in their search for a clear front-runner in the presidential race, what better way to pull the forces together than to wave their long-time foe Hillary Clinton in their faces?
(Orlando Sentinel)

The "bash-Hillary tour," eh? The sole evidence of bashing Senator Clinton from the story was Rove noting Clinton's negative polling data. If that's bashing Clinton, than what are the nation's newspapers doing when they print a story on the latest approval ratings for President Bush?

Let's try to be serious, at least for a moment. Polling data is one of the primary concerns of political strategists, and the negative feelings aroused by Clinton were a campaign issue on the left over a year before Rove's weekend "bash-Hillary tour."

Here's the transcript (a FOX news interview of Rove by Chris Wallace). Scroll down about half way for the mention of Clinton. There's no bashing.

This seems to be a case of the MSM taking a Clinton talking point and doing the legwork of spreading her message.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y.: Today Karl Rove attacked me again. I feel so lucky that I now am giving them such heartburn.