McCain to rely on Rove protege for opposition research

From time to time, we’ve seen reports about John McCain’s heartfelt intention to run an honorable, above-board campaign, focused on substance. McCain, we’re told, has no appetite for ugly campaigning, nasty attacks, guilt by association, and all of the untoward tactics that have come to dominate every election cycle.

It’s curious, then, that McCain has hired Tim Griffin. Bob Novak reports:

Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign’s plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research — the digging up of derogatory information about political opponents. Although final arrangements have not been pinned down, Griffin would work at the Republican National Committee, as he did during Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.

Griffin’s name may sound familiar. There’s a good reason for that.

First, Griffin was a key player in the White House’s U.S. Attorney purge scandal.

Second, remember “vote caging”? Griffin sure does.



If you put aside the Republicans’ law-breaking, cynicism, racism, and assault on democracy, caging is fairly clever. They target eligible voters for disenfranchisement, send them mail knowing it’ll be returned, and then use the “caged” mail to limit those voters’ access to the polls. This is particularly easy for the GOP when targeting soldiers — remember, that’s the pro-military party — who can’t check their mailboxes.

What does this have to do with Griffin and the prosecutor purge scandal? Well, Griffin was the research director for the RNC in 2004 and sent a series of confidential emails to Republican Party higher-ups with the suggestive heading “RE: caging.” The emails contained spreadsheets with the heading, “Caging,” with lists of homeless men and soldiers deployed in Iraq.

From the point of view of the ongoing DoJ scandal, perhaps what’s most urgent about the vote-caging claims is that they go a long, long way toward explaining why Karl Rove and Harriet Miers were so determined to get Griffin seated in the Arkansas U.S. Attorney’s office, and to do so without a confirmation hearing. If, as the Justice Department has continued to insist, Griffin was eminently qualified for the position, why did he need to be spared the hearing at all costs? And once it became clear that he would undergo a hearing, why did Griffin sideline himself with the colorful observation that undergoing Senate confirmation would be “like volunteering to stand in front of a firing squad in the middle of a three-ring circus?” Griffin — who is now in job talks with the Fred Thompson campaign — sure looks like a guy hiding something, and if vote caging is that something, it becomes even more interesting that the White House was pushing him forward.

And now Griffin is going to help McCain out with opposition research. Just another day in the honorable Republican presidential campaign.

Update: Greg Sargent has more, including a reminder of Griffin digging up old footage that wound up in an ad by the Swift Boat Vets.