How many Colorado Republican candidates are running “Rovian” campaigns this year? How many Democrats are?

Although President Barack Obama obviously adopted many of Karl Rove’s tactics and expanded on his advanced use of voter data bases and internet technology to wage a winning campaign in 2008, only a few Colorado candidates seem to executing the Rovian campaign strategies.

In his autobiography, Courage and Consequence, My life as a Conservative in the Fight, Rove devotes a chapter to explaining the Rovian strategy. He uses a three or four other chapters to give his version of what happen in various campaigns that he ran, including President George W. Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns and his campaigns for president in 2000 and 2004 and his campaigns for Republicans in the off-year Congressional elections of 2002 and 2006. Rove also attempts to knock down what he calls “the Rove myth” or legend and to settle scores with political and media critics. And he admits to several important political mistakes and misjudgments. Nobody’s perfect. The rest of the book is devoted to putting Rove’s very positive spin on Bush’s foreign and domestic policy decisions, which most readers will take with various sizes of grains of salt.

For candidates, their strategists and their supporters, the chapter “What is a Rovian Campaign” is the most interesting and worth the price of the book. Rove says there are eight “hallmarks” to a Rovian campaign, and the first four are critical.

1. “A campaign must be first centered on big ideas that reflect the candidate’s philosophy and views and that are perceived by voters as important and relevant.”
2. A campaign must be “persistent in pursuing this strong, persuasive theme in a way that resonates with what voters know.
3. Use historical data to figure out a candidate’s opportunities to find more votes—precinct by precinct and county by county.
4. Publicly available data should be put into sophisticated models that can help identify potential supporters and match them with issues in ways that will get them to turn out for an election.
5. Criticize opponents in focused attacks on substantial, not trivial issues and openly with facts that can be backed up, preferably with the opponent’s own words as shown on You Tube.
6. Every campaign needs a strategic plan and the discipline and bias for action to execute it.
7. Make broad use of “volunteer-friendly” technology.
8. Resources count: knowledge and information for the candidate, volunteers who will help get out the vote and money.

Rove puts his hallmarks in context throughout the book. He’s a good story teller and writer. And, as mentioned above, he’s very loyal to the Bushes and his other clients. What Rove doesn’t cover very well is how Bush raised record amounts for his campaigns. Nor does he discuss in great detail how 527 and other outside groups affected his campaigns.