Given former Bush adviser Karl Rove’s personal history with “the truth” this last decade it’s amusing that his opinion still carries any sort of weight in the media pundit circles. Never-the-less Karl Rove appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning to weigh in on this weekends round of campaign ads and his opinions? Ignore those pesky fact-checkers.

For those of you who can’t watch videos the transcript follows:

Chris Wallace: Right, but in fairness what does McCain do that has gone too far in his ads?

Karl Rove: McCain has gone in some of his ad, similarly gone one step too far and started attributing to Obama things that are beyond the 100% truth test. They don’t need to attack each other in this way. they have legitimate points to make in this way that are beyond…

Chris Wallace: Real quick question, 30 seconds: do they need to be 100% passing the truth test? When you were running bush’s campaign did you care whether some fact check organization…

Karl Rove: No. And you can’t trust the fact check organizations. They’re human beings, they’re individuals. They’ve got their own biases built in there. But both campaigns ought to be careful about, there aught to be an adult who says, “Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don’t we make our point, and won’t we get broader acceptance, and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us, if we don’t include that one little last tweak in the ad?”

Such statements display a fundamental lack of honesty when it comes to fact-check organizations. Yes they’re human, but “checking” facts doesn’t mean analyzing candidates statements or positions based on opinion, it means comparing them to reality. Now we all know that reality has a well known liberal bias but come on, this is ridiculous.

Lets not forget the second half of this farce. Every time the GOP gets pushed up against the ropes lately it seems their first natural instinct is to either change the rules, slander the opponent, or cry foul. In this interview Rove does what he does best, he tries all three in hopes that one of his arguments sticks to the wall.

The simple fact of the matter is that Obama’s latest salvo of attack ads have damaged John McCain where it counts, his image. The days where John McCain could do no wrong, where the media “had his back”?  They’re done.  John McCain the maverick has been replaced by craven John McCain, willing to do anything to win.  And the worst (or best) part? All Obama had to do was shine a spotlight onto McCain’s own words and deeds. McCain did it to himself.

So, damage control, it’s time to go after the fact-checkers. If that’s the case maybe McCain should consider not using them when it suits his purposes. But then this isn’t about being honest or acting honorably, it’s about dragging the debate down to a level where McCain’s lies are simply business as usual, where they can be ignored because “everyone does it“.

This will likely get picked up by the AM radio talkshow circuit but McCain’s treading on increasingly thin ice. In his war against the media he’s lost a lot of allies he’s not likely to get back. As Karl Rove says, “They’re human”. It’s one thing to attack perceived bias, it’s completely another to repeatedly lie after you’ve been called on it and then attack the reporters and fact-checkers.

They might not take such actions too kindly.