Two major new articles are up today. Taken together, they offer the most compelling Theory of Obama I've yet encountered.

The first is Greg Sherman's piece in The New Republic: "The End of the Affair." Pressfolk previously "in the tank" for Mr. O may now be de-tanking themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, the NYT published an article by Adam Nagourney titled "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race." It was hardly a hit piece. Nevertheless, the Obama camp pummeled him hard.

"I've never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others," Nagourney tells me. "I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I'm a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I'm a political opponent."

More:

Reporters are grumbling more and more that the campaign is acting like the Prom Queen. They gripe that it is "arrogant" and "control[ling]," and the campaign's own belief that Obama is poised to make history isn't endearing, either.

Here's the most telling -- and troubling -- part:

Reporters who have covered Obama's biography or his problems with certain voter blocs have been challenged the most aggressively. "They're terrified of people poking around Obama's life," one reporter says. "The whole Obama narrative is built around this narrative that Obama and David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it's not entirely true. So they have to be protective of the crown jewels." Another reporter notes that, during the last year, Obama's old friends and Harvard classmates were requested not to talk to the press without permission.

Just what sort of "crown jewels" are they protecting? The answers may reside in what may be the most eye-opening investigation of Campaign 2008 yet published...

Donna and Karl, sittin' in a tree. Did you know that Donna Brazile has long been chummy with Karl Rove? Take special note of the way Donna praised Rove and Bush in the wake of Katrina.

Turns out Donna's GOP pals have long taken an interest in Barack Obama. Please forgive a lengthy quote (emphases added by me):

Obama did score a landslide victory that year, but it had little to do with his age, energy level or the obsolete nature of the Democratic Party establishment. His campaign manager David Axelrod ran the classic Rovian smear campaign, first accusing Obama’s top primary contender of sexual impropriety. After disgracing Blair Hull out of contention, Axelrod used the same device against the G.O.P. primary winner, Jack Ryan.

Of course, this is where things get interesting. House Speaker Dennis Hastert decided he must stick his oar into the battle, calling on Ryan to end his senate bid. The candidate dutifully bowed out, and in his stead, the Illinois Republican Party fielded an unknown, African American bible-thumper from Maryland named Alan Keyes. Clearly, the G.O.P. wanted Obama to win that election. No other explanation can account for the party sacrificing a senate seat to a (supposedly) liberal Democrat who'd (supposedly) spoken out against the Iraq War in 2002.

A Hollywood script writer couldn't have come up with this storyline. Within a year of arriving in Washington, Brazile’s rising star – the product of a globe-trotting Kansas woman and a philandering tribal leader in Kenya - had launched his presidential exploratory committee. The Internet fundraising team of Howard Dean signed on for the ride. So, too, did some of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks, corporate law firms, and energy giants. By the end of 2007, Obama would post a record-breaking haul of $100 million in campaign contributions. And all while he was still "introducing himself", as Brazile and other analysts put it, to the American public.

Who exactly brought the banks and oil companies to the table still remains to be ferreted out, but it wasn't Dean or Brazile, or even the man who placed Obama on the speaker's list at the 2004 Democratic Convention, John Kerry. It's more likely that Karl Rove huddled with top Bush fundraisers to set that gravy train in motion. Among the candidate's money bundlers were George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar, both oil industry executives. Other Bush campaign pioneers joined the bandwagon soon afterward.

Allow me to add a further note about the Ryan business. He was running behind in most polls, and may have lost to Obama in any case. But no-one can deny that he would have been a tougher foe than Alan Keyes was. The strange (and possibly illegal) leaking of Ryan's sealed divorced records -- against the wishes of both himself and his famed ex -- could have created sympathy for Ryan.

Now let's fast-forward to the 2008 primaries.

Remember the prog-blog Big Lie about how Hillary owed her votes to a cross-over campaign masterminded by Rush Limbaugh? This propaganda meme spun the truth 180 degrees.

The Republicans had targeted Hillary for removal from the beginning:

As she would mention in the Washington Times article two years later, her “old friend” Rove had hit the ground running with the start of the 2008 election cycle, appearing on talk shows to bash frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Behind the scenes, G.O.P. rank and file activists were organizing crossover voting drives to knock Clinton out of the race before November.

That's not all. As you know, many have questioned the antics of the Obama team in the caucus states. Obama did much better in those elections.) Were the Obama supporters actual Democrats -- or were they Rovian changelings?

In the red states, they could easily outnumber Democrats at the caucuses, enriching Obama’s delegate count and allowing him to boast later “I’ve won more states.”

To recruit additional foot troops for this effort, New Hampshire G.O.P. leader Stephen DaMaura started the Facebook website “Stop Hillary Clinton (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary).”

Although the Clinton camp didn’t realize it at the time, a caucus in Nevada (like a caucus anywhere) would naturally benefit Obama, since her base of blue-collar, older and non-English-speaking supporters would not be driving across town to attend some meeting run by disorganized volunteers. On the other hand, motivated Republicans could be counted on to show up, especially if the G.O.P. candidates could be persuaded not to campaign in the state. (They didn’t.)

And now we get into serious electoral fraud territory:

According to Cronin’s study, nearly all of Obama’s 138-delegate lead over Clinton could be traced to 12 red state caucuses. In most of these contests he routinely won by 2-1 margins, even though polls in those states showed the candidates much closer. In Idaho, for instance, with its scant African American population, few colleges and relatively few Starbucks outlets, he captured 15 of the state's 18 delegates.

Something fishy was going on here. Was Dean's so-called 50-state strategy for a DNC managed campaign to stack caucus locations with Obama supporters? Did the number of G.O.P. crossover voters wildly exceed expectations? Or was there just downright lying in the computation of the vote tallies?

Too bad "Thor" Friedman won't talk about this stuff. Fortunately, we have Rosemary Regello, author of the above. She also wrote this list of potential "October Surprises" awaiting the Lightbringer.

If Regello's analysis is correct, then Rove followed a clear one-two-three strategy.

1. Pick the Dem with the most skeletonized closet.
2. Set 'im up.
3. Knock 'im down.

Even if step three does not come off as planned, those skeletons will keep a President Obama in line.