from Sidney Blumenthal
Quote:April 27, 2006 | 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...
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...
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.
The administration's die-hard supporters in the Senate, meanwhile, are fighting to prevent the Armed Services Committee from calling the generals to testify. Frustrating congressional oversight is essential to preserving executive power. Checks and balances are the enemy of the Bush White House.
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Here, Blumenthal is looking at the ideological component in what is/will drive this administration (and key elements in the new conservative movement) over the next six months. To put that another way, Blumenthal is pointing to motives other than mere individual self-preservation (from future legal procedings and possible incarceration which may well arise as consequence of losing the majority in the Senate or House and the certain dismantling of some present barriers to transparency and serious investigations). This is a valuable way to understand the matter as, even if many in this administration end up in jail as they likely should, they would constitute a very small percentage of the movement's members/supporters. Bill Kristol, Dobson, Coulter, the insurance or energy execs and lobbyists, the movement media stooges at Fox, etc aren't in legal jeopardy but they'll all fight tooth and nail to prevent the loss of power. Though ideologues, they are, as a movement, acutely cognizant that their ideologies are quite irrelevant if they lose legislative power. Of course, for many, this will also jeopardize their priviledges and even livelihoods.
And it is important to understand that the ideology(s) at issue encompass both domestic and international spheres. In the domestic sphere, this involves reversing the New Deal, deregulating business/commerce, and re-ordering society by enforcing consensus around a single and exclusive moral world-view and through eliminating so much as is possible the institutions and traditions (eg courts, independent press) which functioned to limit or attenuate autocratic exercise of power. In the international sphere, the ideology is apparent in rejection of agreements, treaties, and of an entire set of ideas and codes designed (in great part by the US) to limit and attenuate moves by any single state towards hegemony.
see here
Consider the potential consequences if the conservatives lose Senate or House dominance in six months, and then if investigations lead in the direction of war crimes (Nuremburg) committed by this administration and its military leaders. Who, internationally, will speak in defence of what has gone on under the tenure of this administration? Blair is deeply wounded now, in great part through his 'poodle' stance re America. The Italian PM is busy humping traffic cops and has lost the last election. Howard? Unquestioning or uncritical support will come only from Israel.
There's a lot at stake.
