I expect a lot of frothy hyperbole from Andrew Sullivan’s website. But does Andrew really seriously believe that Juanita Yvette Lozano (the Bush campaign worker now indicted for sending the infamous debate prep video to Tom Downey – AS calls her a “democratic activist” ⦠please) was part of a plot emanating from the Gore campaign? Really? At the risk of stating the transparently obvious, if the Gore campaign was behind pilfering the tape, why did they take the tape to the FBI?
Now, let’s be candid. Or let me rephrase that: let me be candid. I’d love to find out that Karl Rove was behind this whole thing.
Why?
Human nature.
Original sin.
My fallen nature.
Wanting bad things to happen to my enemies.
Because Rove’s BEEN CAUGHT DOING THIS KIND OF THING BEFORE and I’d like to see him get caught, etc.
(Okay, okay. Not quite proven. But read the link above about Rove, and draw your own conclusions.)
I’m going to be watching the Lozano case pretty close to see what comes up. But, regrettably, I’ve got to conclude that Rove probably didn’t do it. If he did, we’ll know soon enough, because it’s hard to imagine that Lozano wouldn’t give up her bosses if she could, since she’s facing like 15 years – at least in theory.
Anyway, back to the point.
There’s a very plausible scenario in which this tape sending episode was a dirty trick by the Bush campaign. One that went awry when Tom Downey didn’t take the bait and took the tape to the FBI. It’s also plausible that Lozano just came up with this on her own- presumably because of latent Dem sympathies. But it’s really not plausible to conclude that the Gore camp hatched this plot and then betrayed its own plot to the Feds. I think that’s a pretty safe bet unless and until we see some surprising new evidence to the contrary. And I feel pretty confident that Sullivan does not have any such evidence.
Way confident.
