Bob Shrum: "Bush: Lame duck with broken right wing"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/

As we near the Special Counsel's day of reckoning with Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, a weakened Bush Administration prays, probably literally, for no indictments and some good news from the Iraq War or the battle with its own base over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet the mysterious Miers. (Her recently revealed columns in the Texas Bar Association journal suggest that she needs not only to take a brush up course in Constitutional Law, but to buy and read Strunk and White's manual on usage of the English language.)

Meanwhile, divided Conservatives are calculating how best to defend their presumed champion Rove if he's forced to face the legal music. The president has vouched for the fairness of the Special Counsel, but others on the right are ready to launch an assault. Maybe Rove could stay at the White House even if he is indicted (sure, and maybe the French will send 20,000 troops to Iraq.) David Frum, Bush's "axis of evil" speechwriter and Miers antagonist, who's done more than any Democrat ever could to create the impression of an axis of mediocrity in the Bush Administration, has offered a Rove-Libby defense that their lawyers would never dare to present. In retaliating against former Ambassador Joe Wilson for confounding the Bush claim that Iraq was buying nuclear material from Niger, Frum has said that all Rove, Libby, et. al. did — if they did it — was tell the "truth" that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative. Does this mean it would have been legal for someone to reveal the "truth" about the date and place of D-Day during World War II? Or the fact, before President Kennedy was ready to announce the blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis, that the CIA had discovered Soviet missles in Cuba?

---snip---

For Bush, Iraq is the problem, not the solution. If he withdraws some troops next year to cushion Republican losses in the 2006 midterm elections, he runs the risk that the rest will be left even more vulnerable, that the guerilla war will intensify, and that his ultimate legacy will be a riven and a radicalized Iraq and a greater terrorist threat across the Islamic world. Bush didn't want to be like his father and he won't; whatever else you think of him, the first President Bush ran a successful war — and a successful foreign policy. As John Kerry said, this George Bush should have gone after Osama bin Laden, not gone into Iraq.

So here Bush 43 now stands, with a 38% job rating: his credibility tattered with Conservatives because of Harriet Miers and shredded across the country by his apparent indifference and clear ineptitude in the face of Hurricane Katrina, by soaring gas prices and by a war we were lied into and can't seem to get out of. When Joe Wilson told the truth, the Administration's reaction was to attack him, attack his wife, and attack Iraq. That's the real crime here, whether Rove, Libby, or anyone else is indicted. The bodyguard of lies has collapsed; we now know that his own aides even lied to Bush when they denied that they had any conversation with the press about Wilson and his wife. Now a President in trouble stubbornly flies deeper into the storm. And hobbled by the Miers nomination, he's not only a lame duck; he can't even rely on his right wing.

[sasquatch]

1. This coming from a guy who can't beat a retard in a election

:eyes:
Will someone "convince" him to never have anything to do with the Democratic party ever again.

[LynnTheDem]

2. "by a war we were lied into" And the US majority agree about that.

BUSH LIED and 2000 Americans DIED.

We won't even bother to mention the UK/"coalition" troops or the Iraqis.

[tenshi816]

3. Great bit of photoshopping there -

did you do that?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

4. Yes, thank you...

...the original pic in the frame was, I believe, the "A Charge To Keep" painting (or some other painting of someone on a horse). I thought the cake-sucking pic more accurately represented his presidency.

:patriot:

[PurityOfEssence]

5. "We've turned the corner so many times in Iraq...

...that we're just circling the block."

What a delicious article; the ease and focus with which it's written is pure prosaic joy.

The thing people need to keep in mind when cringing at the seemingly overwhelming power of the reactionaries is that their plurality is incredibly thin at the best of times, and they can only steal elections that are somewhat close and quash stories in the press for so long.

For all the spinning, covering and outright chorusing of lies, the history of Katrina is already written and done: Junior was an unfeeling, bumbling idiot who cared more for his image than for any mere mortals. Public opinion is maleable over time on many issues such as the '00 election, but certain things get flash-frozen with a consensus pronouncement that doesn't get modified. Even to conservatives, Katrina is an embarrassment, and it eroded the prime appeal of their champion: he wasn't decisive and straightforward.

Life isn't like the movies; that's why we have movies. Movies have easily understandable pivotal moments that bring change; life is incremental and things happen for many different reasons. The sloppy and unsure actions of this hereditary nobody is stripping away all but the true disciples, and it doesn't look like he can get those others back. The lie is obvious: he's not a clear-headed and dynamic leader; he's an addle-brained, weasely poseur who doesn't give a fuck about anything except great wealth and his whopping public ego. He's haunted with feelings of being a loser, and he needs to trample all over everyone to disprove his fear; he's mean, petty and clueless. It shows.

Great article.

[KoKo]

6. And thanks to the Daily News Scoop we know that Bush's aides didn't lie

to him. At least Rove told him...I went after Plame...

Shrum needs to correct his article, to include that Bush knew Rove leaked Plame and yet told Scotty to go out and lie for him.


"The bodyguard of lies has collapsed; we now know that his own aides even lied to Bush when they denied that they had any conversation with the press about Wilson and his wife."


And here's Josh Marshall's comments on the "Daily News" article by Tom DeFrank:


A few more thoughts on Tom DeFrank's article on President Bush, noted below.
According to DeFrank, President Bush knew about Karl Rove's role in leaking Valerie Plame's identity from the very start. He doesn't tell us whether the president knew in advance or while the purported crimes were occuring. But let's set that aside for the moment and stipulate, for the sake of discussion, the accuracy of DeFrank's nugget: that from the moment this became a public issue, President Bush has known Karl Rove was one of the culprits

-snip-


And one more question. For almost two years, Scott McClellan insisted that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby had anything to do with the leaks. He knew because he asked them, he said. He was very categorical.

Now it seems that at least with reference to Rove, the president knew McClellan's statements weren't true. And yet he allowed McClellan to make them. Come to think of it, I guess this one really isn't even a question. It speaks for itself, doesn't it?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

[Totally Committed]

7. Me: Bob Shrum -- a dickless asshole with shit for brains,

who needs to shut up and go away. Forever.

Just saying.

TC