Congress Stirs to Rein in the President....Foiling Rove's Strategy

[rodeodance]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/brecher
Congress Stirs to Rein in the President

by JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH

February 9, 2006

............


Foiling Rove's Strategy

At the January meeting of the Republican National Committee, Karl Rove explicitly laid out a strategy to win the 2006 election by stigmatizing the Democratic Party as weak on national security. Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have followed Rove's script in their aggressive defense of warrantless NSA spying.

Nothing would make Rove happier than to have warrantless spying and other abuses of presidential authority treated as a partisan issue of Democrats against Republicans. But they aren't. As Al Gore recently observed, "Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program." Specter told the Washington Post, "I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."

One key to foiling Rove strategy is to treat government lawlessness as a nonpartisan concern. The combination of bipartisan complicity and bipartisan concern opens a new opportunity to split support for Bush's criminal activities and to build a coalition to terminate them.

This is possible because Rove's script isn't playing so well even in the Republican Party. Insight magazine quoted Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as saying, "I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context." Before the Gonzales hearing Specter said that the spy program of his own party's President is in flat violation of the law. In a post-hearing interview with the Washington Post, Specter said of Gonzales, "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser!".......

[MissWaverly]

1. Thanks for posting Rodeodance

I posted this 2 weeks ago where it sank like a stone, I saw Chuck Hagel say this on This
Week. I am kicking and recommending because I think this is what we must do.

[Ecumenist]

2. It's about Damn time

That criminal is just a plain unvarnished criminal and the worse that there could be.... He's trying to assault, batter and destroy the constitution. He needs to be thrown under the jail and dragged away in chains. Nothing happens in a group unless a number of powerful people get together to turn the minds of the masses, (or make it seem that the majority agrees with their points of view). More and more people need to speak out and say NO!!!! WE WILL NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN FOR THE SAKE OF OURSELVES, OUR CHILDREN, OUR COUNTRY, THE HUMAN RACE, OUR PLANET!! WE WON'T ALLOW THE SHREDDING OF EVERYTHING WE HOLD DEAR TO BE TORN FROM US, THE MOST BASIC OF THESE THINGS BEING OUR DIGNITY AND OUR RIGHT TO EXPRESS OURSELVES AS HUMAN BEINGS AND TO HAVE OUR PRIVATE THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS. OUR HUMANITY IS NOT FOR SALE, FOR MONEY, FOR POLITICS, FOR POWER OR PRETENSE OF EMPIRE. There are ways to stop this crime against humanity, against the planet, against the right to be one's own person, to have an opinion, right or wrong and the ability to agree to disagree. karl rove is nothing but a bully who's worked to frighten and threaten people into going along with the plans of a rather minuscule cabal through blackmail and God only knows what else. This works in the same way that sexual abuse does, that is, only if you keep the secret. If enough of these same people were to come forward as a force, speaking out IN SPITE of what the threat is an reveal what has been done to our congress and Senate, how long do you think that the criminals would hold on to any kind of power? We need to, as a people, to speak out without fear, and say with a loud Voice, NO!!! Because we are at a point where what we have to lose is beyond all imagination.... Wake Up, People.. What holds these people in power is our SILENCE, our FEAR!!

[fknobbit]

3. oh ....it's playing

"This is possible because Rove's script isn't playing so well even in the Republican Party"


but the rats are too busy disguising themselves And trying to get into scarce lifeboats. They have voted party line and openly flaunted their crimes (see Delay) on every single issue since 2000. They should should hang together, along with Lieberman and Miller..

[Mme. Defarge]

4. "Smoking Dutch Cleanser!"

That'll do it to you every time! I should have guessed.

[yurbud]

5. for a brief time, Karl Rove was poison to the GOP--we should make that

stick all the time.

Every time he trots out this crap, we have to make it Karl's and make it such a tar baby that the GOP can't shake him.

The Democrats did a good job of this during the wiretap hearings: they reminded the public that they were in Washington and vulnerable to attack on 9/11.

No one becomes a public official because they want to leave our country undefended. Instead, we have to figure out which set of proposals is going to do the best job and which make our problems worse.