The Bush Brain Method
By 
I know most of you remember that Karl Rove was known for being someone who thought that going after pols’ strengths rather their weaknesses was sound political strategery strategy. It’s how we ended up with people at the 2004 RNC mockingly wearing purple heart bandaids on their faces and it seemed like a pretty successful–if disgusting–gambit at the time.
Yesterday I was talking to a tweep who made the case that these perceived strengths were actually weaknesses if they in effect functioned as weaknesses. That sounded really wrong to me, but as we talked it out, I became less and less sure of my position. It’s a subject that really interests me, so I thought I’d put the question to you all: Do people in fact have political “strengths” if they can be attacked effectively? And is the strategy of going after these perceived strengths a good one?
Furthermore:
Does the changing, increasingly-more-polarized political climate affect this strategy? For instance, would R’s have worn the bandaids in 1994? Or would they have shown at least the perfunctory reverence for military service that R’s pretend to be about?