Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Geroge Stephanopoulos has quite a scoop, one that I haven't seen elsehwere: On his ABC News blog, he reports:

"Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: `The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do it."

"But in a year where even some Republican candidates are running away from the President on the campaign trail, does this offer have any value to Lieberman? Still smarting from all the coverage of "the kiss" at last year's State of the Union, the Lieberman camp isn't looking for an explicit endorsement. That could create more problems than it solves.

"The White House might help Lieberman by putting the kibosh on any move to replace the weak Republican candidates, Alan Schlesinger, with a stronger candidate."

The post was later updated to say that "Dan Gerstein called from the Lieberman campaign to say the above account from another Lieberman adviser is not accurate. While confirming that Rove called Lieberman, he added: `Rove made a personal call, no help was offered, and we are not interested regardless.'"

I for one trust Stephanoupolous' reporting. Even though I have had concerns about the increasing numbers going through the political operative/journalist revolving door, Stephanoupolous has become one of our better political reporters-- and I find him to be meticulous and careful in his reporting.

Regardless of what was said between Lieberman and Rove, one would thing that the phone call itself would be bigger news.

Update: The Stephanoupolous report is the top headline at Huffingtonpost, along with this analysis. I am not so prescient after all! Meanwhile, the story has still not been given any attention by any major newspaper.

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