Responding to rumors that Karl Rove is in Nashville tending the Corker campaign, Corker spokesman Todd Womack said (according to A.C. Kleinhider) that "the man has no role, advisory or otherwise, in the campaign," and (according to Michael Silence) that "Karl Rove has had no advisory role in this campaign and certainly has not been in the state visiting with us."

They are certainly quick to distance themselves from the rumors, which are swirling again today in Nashville. (I expect photos to emerge at any time.)

Which is curious, because Rove himself has been quite open about his involvement in the 2006 mid-term elections. Any Republican running for national office who claims Karl Rove is not involved in their campaign and expects the voting public to believe it has a promising future in the used car business after their candidate is defeated in the election. For example...

New York Times:

With so much on the line, Mr. Rove has taken to traveling the country to form strategies with individual candidates and local parties while brainstorming with the president's political and policy teams on broad items the White House can pursue to help Republicans everywhere. He is focusing on only the major planks of Mr. Bush's agenda and not the minutiae of policy that had consumed hours of his day.

In regular West Wing breakfast sessions catered by the White House mess, Mr. Rove and the White House political director, Sara Taylor, have already been reaching out to nervous and vulnerable Republicans, three at a time, laying out an emerging three-prong attack on Democrats over national security, taxes and health care.

In meetings at the White House, aboard Air Force One and in candidates' home states, Mr. Rove is trying to rally Republicans to stand by the president and his agenda.

[..]

Mr. Rove is also working in close contact with Ms. Taylor and the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, to put in motion the get-out-the-vote machinery Mr. Mehlman masterminded in 2004. They are refining state "victory programs" to identify potentially friendly voters who can be expected to receive messages about how the Democrats are ill prepared to fight terrorism or will undo tax cuts the president wants to make permanent.

More examples after the jump...

Time Magazine:

Every Monday, überstrategist Karl Rove and Republican Party officials on Capitol Hill get spreadsheets tallying the numbers of voters registered, volunteers recruited, doors knocked on and phone numbers dialed for 40 House campaigns and a dozen Senate races. Over the next few weeks, the party will begin flying experienced paid and volunteer workers into states for the final push. The Senate Republicans' campaign committee calls its agents special teams, led by marshals, all in the service of the partywide effort known as the 72-Hour Task Force because its working philosophy initially focused on the final three days before an election.

Washington Post:

Rove and the small cadre of operatives who have been at his side throughout the administration -- including Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and White House political director Sara Taylor -- confidence flows from a conviction that a political operation that has produced three consecutive national victories is capable of one more, despite voter disaffection with Iraq and GOP scandals in Washington.

Republican officials say the three closely coordinate strategy, with constant e-mails and a daily conference call. They see this familiarity -- in many respects it is the same team leading GOP strategy as in the past two elections -- as one advantage they have over Democrats, whose leaders on Capitol Hill and national party officials have been at odds on strategy.

NPR Interview:

KARL ROVE: I see several things; first, unlike the general public, I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races and after all this does come down to individual contests between individual candidates. Second of all, I see the individual spending reports and contribution reports.

ROBERT SIEGEL: And all that money I assume would put a lot of television advertising out there.

ROVE: And a lot of organized volunteer activity, you need to have staff and infrastructure and materials to give to your large army of volunteers to get out the vote.

SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.

ROVE: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.

SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races...

ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.

SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your...

ROVE: I said THE math.

Washington Post (by way of the Detroit News):

"I look at the individual races as clear-eyed as I can every single day, knowing what we are doing and knowing that we have the capacity to move the resources in if we need to do more," Rove said last week.

"Incumbents are hard to defeat. Our candidates by and large have significantly more resources than they have. And we have succeeded in making these races choices between two local candidates."

Arizona Daily Star:

Armed with massive polling data and inside knowledge of how the GOP plans to mobilize its voter base, Rove is characteristically confident about how the day will go for his side.

Q: When Congress reconvenes in January, how many Democrats will be in the House and how many Democrats will be in the Senate?

Rove: A minority in each body. I expect Republican majorities in both houses. (Rove declined to talk specific numbers but acknowledged each majority will be smaller than it is now).

Q: How can you be so sure of that?

Rove: Because I'm looking at it not only at the macro level but at individual races on a race-by-race level. I see the quality of the candidates and the issues on the table. I see the activity they have in place and I see the grassroots activity being generated around the country by the campaigns in conjunction with the Republican National Committee's 72-hour (voter turnout) task force. And I'm being inundated with data from all the individual races. It points strongly to a Republican Senate and to a Republican House.

Register-Guard (Oregan):

Rove is giving a virtuoso performance designed to prevent the Democrats from taking control of the House and Senate or, if that is no longer possible, to hold down the size of the Democratic victory to make it easier for the GOP to come back in 2008.

His plan is three-pronged: to re-energize any conservatives who may be flagging; to make sure that the GOP's carefully constructed campaign apparatus is functioning at peak efficiency; and to put the resources of the federal government to use for political gain.

[..]

This week, Rove and his staff will turn to their endgame.

They will oversee an exodus of political employees from Cabinet agencies, Capitol Hill and lobbying firms - many of them skilled campaign veterans - to more than a dozen battleground states.

Many will act as ``marshals,'' supervising the ``72-hour plan'' for getting out the vote developed by Rove in 2001 with Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director who now heads the Republican National Committee.

OK, then.

UPDATE: It is possible that if Rove is indeed in Tennessee that he is here for some other reason that meeting with the Corker campaign, such as setting up the voting challenges that are already starting in Memphis. But either way, to suggest that the White House and Karl Rove are not actively working to put Republican candidates in Congress is a stretch.

From the Washington Post:

White House officials say the president plans to use the final weeks of the campaign to try to reshape the national agenda and to help as many candidates as he can...

..."The president is going to be articulating the big issues and do so in a way that grabs people's attention," Rove said, although he quickly added that he believes many of the races will turn on local issues.

[..]

A key focus is Tennessee, central to GOP hopes of holding the Senate, where Republican Bob Corker is locked in an expectedly tight race with Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D). Bush has visited there twice, and Republicans anticipate another visit from Bush and the first lady. White House officials have also pushed Corker to go after Ford more aggressively

This was, I believe, reported about a week or so before the "call me" ad started.