archy

This one is for the rumor mill
Recently, some of the speculation I've heard about the October Surprise has centered on the idea that Rove might have Bush stage some headline grabbing stunt, specifically a repeat of his silly night flight to Baghdad last Thanksgiving. The idea is that such a stunt, though a transparent campaign ploy, would dominate a few news cycles, drive Kerry off the front page, fire up the faithful, and perhaps make points with a wavering demographic group. In the case of a new Baghdad trip the target would be military families back in the states (most of the serving military overseas have already voted, so there wouldn't be much to gain from them).

My own feeling has been that Rove is more likely to try and keep us off balance by spreading the rumors than to actually lose a day or more of campaigning to stage such a stunt. Today a little news item popped up, via Atrios, that certainly fits with the Baghdad trip scenario. According to the AP, Bush will be spending the day in Crawford Saturday. As Atrios says, "Strange time in the campaign for a rest."

The first Baghdad stunt was done under cover of spending Thanksgiving with his family at Crawford. While George, Sr. and Barbara stood on the porch holding her famous Jello salad, George, Jr. and Condi were sneaking out the back door and heading for the airport. Karl Rove has a limited repertoire of tricks and he tends to repeat them with as little variation as possible.

Am I on to something here, or am I just feeding the rumor mill?