Bronco_Beerslug
04-27-2006, 07:19 AM
The president doesn't care that he is reviled. He is a martyr, and someday all will see his glory. Meanwhile, he's got Karl doing his dirty work.
By Sidney Blumenthal
The urgent dispatch of Karl Rove to the business of maintaining one-party rule in the midterm elections is the Bush White House's belated startle reflex to its endangerment. Besieged by crises of his own making, plummeting to ever lower depths in the polls week after week, Bush has assigned his political general to muster dwindling forces for a heroic offensive to break out of the closing ring. If the Democrats gain control of the House or Senate they will launch a thousand subpoenas to establish the oversight that has been abdicated by the Republican Congress.
In his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in 2004, the "war president" spoke of "greatness" and "resolve" and repeatedly promised "a safer world" and "security," and compared himself "to a resolute president named Truman." Afterward, Bush declared he had had his "accountability moment"; further debate was unnecessary; the future was settled.
But Rove's elaborate design for Republican rule during the second term has collapsed under the strain of his grandiosity. In 2004, Rove galvanized "the base" (ironically, "al-Qaida" in Arabic) through ruthless divide-and-conquer and slash-and-burn tactics. But with Bush winning the election by a bare 50.73 percent, he failed to forge the unassailable Republican realignment that he sought.
Rove is an amateur historian whose goal was modeled on the apparently unlikely figure of President William McKinley. Bush's radicalism bears little resemblance to McKinley's stalwart conservatism except for his friendly orientation toward big business. Rove zeroed in on McKinley because his election in 1896 created a natural Republican presidential majority that was broken only by the party split of 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Progressive and when Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in a Democratic realignment in 1932. Rove and Bush had hoped to use the second term to force radical changes that would alter American government, society and politics. At last, they planned to undo the New Deal and return to the Republican Eden. But Rove's proposal for the privatization of Social Security, among other schemes, was aborted without even a single congressional hearing.
The Republican cathedral of his dreams in ruins, Rove has now discharged formal control of moribund domestic policy to a protégé, Joel Kaplan (a former law clerk of Justice Antonin Scalia's), in a reshuffle of the White House senior staff that includes the rise of another Rove protégé, Josh Bolten, as chief of staff, replacing Andrew Card, a New England Bush family factotum left over from the term of the elder Bush who was not one of Rove's creations. As Bolten has explained privately, Rove remains at the apex of a new iron triangle, just as he stood at the peak of the Texas triangle of Karen Hughes, Joe Allbaugh and himself that managed George W. Bush's 2000 campaign for president.
Rove's lieutenants have been promoted to hold the fort while he begins the epic defense of the embattled regime. His mission is to salvage the Republican majority in Congress from the blighted corruption of its leadership and rescue the Bush White House from the consequences of its own radical policies on everything from the endless Iraq war to skyrocketing gasoline prices. In 2004, Rove was still able to manage the Bush campaign on the momentum of fear from Sept. 11. No longer perceived by the public as a rock of security, Bush's rigid leadership is seen as the source of turbulence. Security was his promise, but disorder has become his byproduct.
So Rove must depend on the tricks of his trade -- arousing fear of gays and other threats (Hollywood) to traditional family values, as he did in 2004; spinning national security to cast the Democrats as weak and unpatriotic, as he did in 2002; using well-financed front groups and his regular corps of political consultants to outsource smears and produce them as television and radio commercials, as he did to destroy John McCain in the Republican primaries of 2000 and John Kerry in 2004; and conducting whispering campaigns about the personal lives of those he seeks to annihilate, as he has done since his devastating rumor-mongering about then Texas Gov. Ann Richards as a "lesbian" helped install his patron in the Lone Star Statehouse in 1994 as the springboard for the White House.
Rove must concentrate his mind with one gimlet eye fixed on special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who on Wednesday summoned him back to testify before a federal grand jury. As Rove develops strategy for elections to come, he is a subject under investigation for dirty tricks past.
The ferocious defense of Bush's radical presidency is being mounted on other fronts. In the face of the generals who commanded the troops in Iraq and demand the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for blind arrogance and unswerving incompetence, Bush has reaffirmed his support. In the last two weeks, Rumsfeld has appeared on 14 right-wing radio talk shows, securing "the base" and giving full vent to his untethered personality. On April 18, Laura Ingraham interviewed him on her syndicated program. The transcript as it appears on the official Defense of Defense Web site records: "Ingraham: I saw Charles Krauthammer (the conservative pundit) a couple of nights ago saying there is absolutely no chance that you would step down. Is he right about that? Secretary Rumsfeld: He is a very smart man. [Laughter.]"
Next page: For Rumsfeld and Cheney, the rest of Bush's term is the endgame.
(CONTINUED)
http://tinyurl.com/n2l4x
By Sidney Blumenthal
The urgent dispatch of Karl Rove to the business of maintaining one-party rule in the midterm elections is the Bush White House's belated startle reflex to its endangerment. Besieged by crises of his own making, plummeting to ever lower depths in the polls week after week, Bush has assigned his political general to muster dwindling forces for a heroic offensive to break out of the closing ring. If the Democrats gain control of the House or Senate they will launch a thousand subpoenas to establish the oversight that has been abdicated by the Republican Congress.
In his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in 2004, the "war president" spoke of "greatness" and "resolve" and repeatedly promised "a safer world" and "security," and compared himself "to a resolute president named Truman." Afterward, Bush declared he had had his "accountability moment"; further debate was unnecessary; the future was settled.
But Rove's elaborate design for Republican rule during the second term has collapsed under the strain of his grandiosity. In 2004, Rove galvanized "the base" (ironically, "al-Qaida" in Arabic) through ruthless divide-and-conquer and slash-and-burn tactics. But with Bush winning the election by a bare 50.73 percent, he failed to forge the unassailable Republican realignment that he sought.
Rove is an amateur historian whose goal was modeled on the apparently unlikely figure of President William McKinley. Bush's radicalism bears little resemblance to McKinley's stalwart conservatism except for his friendly orientation toward big business. Rove zeroed in on McKinley because his election in 1896 created a natural Republican presidential majority that was broken only by the party split of 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Progressive and when Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in a Democratic realignment in 1932. Rove and Bush had hoped to use the second term to force radical changes that would alter American government, society and politics. At last, they planned to undo the New Deal and return to the Republican Eden. But Rove's proposal for the privatization of Social Security, among other schemes, was aborted without even a single congressional hearing.
The Republican cathedral of his dreams in ruins, Rove has now discharged formal control of moribund domestic policy to a protégé, Joel Kaplan (a former law clerk of Justice Antonin Scalia's), in a reshuffle of the White House senior staff that includes the rise of another Rove protégé, Josh Bolten, as chief of staff, replacing Andrew Card, a New England Bush family factotum left over from the term of the elder Bush who was not one of Rove's creations. As Bolten has explained privately, Rove remains at the apex of a new iron triangle, just as he stood at the peak of the Texas triangle of Karen Hughes, Joe Allbaugh and himself that managed George W. Bush's 2000 campaign for president.
Rove's lieutenants have been promoted to hold the fort while he begins the epic defense of the embattled regime. His mission is to salvage the Republican majority in Congress from the blighted corruption of its leadership and rescue the Bush White House from the consequences of its own radical policies on everything from the endless Iraq war to skyrocketing gasoline prices. In 2004, Rove was still able to manage the Bush campaign on the momentum of fear from Sept. 11. No longer perceived by the public as a rock of security, Bush's rigid leadership is seen as the source of turbulence. Security was his promise, but disorder has become his byproduct.
So Rove must depend on the tricks of his trade -- arousing fear of gays and other threats (Hollywood) to traditional family values, as he did in 2004; spinning national security to cast the Democrats as weak and unpatriotic, as he did in 2002; using well-financed front groups and his regular corps of political consultants to outsource smears and produce them as television and radio commercials, as he did to destroy John McCain in the Republican primaries of 2000 and John Kerry in 2004; and conducting whispering campaigns about the personal lives of those he seeks to annihilate, as he has done since his devastating rumor-mongering about then Texas Gov. Ann Richards as a "lesbian" helped install his patron in the Lone Star Statehouse in 1994 as the springboard for the White House.
Rove must concentrate his mind with one gimlet eye fixed on special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who on Wednesday summoned him back to testify before a federal grand jury. As Rove develops strategy for elections to come, he is a subject under investigation for dirty tricks past.
The ferocious defense of Bush's radical presidency is being mounted on other fronts. In the face of the generals who commanded the troops in Iraq and demand the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for blind arrogance and unswerving incompetence, Bush has reaffirmed his support. In the last two weeks, Rumsfeld has appeared on 14 right-wing radio talk shows, securing "the base" and giving full vent to his untethered personality. On April 18, Laura Ingraham interviewed him on her syndicated program. The transcript as it appears on the official Defense of Defense Web site records: "Ingraham: I saw Charles Krauthammer (the conservative pundit) a couple of nights ago saying there is absolutely no chance that you would step down. Is he right about that? Secretary Rumsfeld: He is a very smart man. [Laughter.]"
Next page: For Rumsfeld and Cheney, the rest of Bush's term is the endgame.
(CONTINUED)
http://tinyurl.com/n2l4x