Okay. It’s over. No, really. It is. George Bush’s Neoconservative Revolution is dead. It started with Cindy Sheehan’s off-message camp in front of Bush’s ranch. Bored Washington reporters stuck in Crawford had nothing else to report, so they made Cindy’s camp into a media circus. Then, in a stroke of shitty luck, Katrina hit. Bush’s advisors were out of town: Shopping in New York, getting married in Greece, buying a new house – doing those sorts of things. And so Bush was on his own, to show his true cold-bolded colors.
The news of Cindy’s Camp Casey shifted to the news of an abandoned New Orleans. And with that, all gloves came off. Fox reporters looked into the camera and did something amazing: They told the truth. Americans heard and saw over and over again just how out of touch Bush really was. He stayed on vacation! He told the inept Brownie that he was doing a hecka of a job! He bungled, bungled and bungled.
Things kept unraveling. Bush’s trust levels dropped. Americans took off their collective rose glasses, and didn’t like what they saw. The war kept on. Bush’s cronyism kept getting caught screwing things up. Bush’s allies were getting indicted left and right. Torture, chemical weapons, secret prisons and all other horrible things kept coming to the forefront. Top Republicans kept abandoning Bush, changing course and calling for political cover and a new direction.
And then things got worse: The narrative shifted to (1) the failure of the Iraq war and (2) the lies that led to the war. And there it has been stuck. Bush sunk so low, as to break the first rule of his administration: Never respond to anything of substance. He broke that rule by denying the charges that he had lied – opening up the debate that has engulfed the political pundits for several news cycles already.
Armed with the Libby story, and with Bush joining in the debate for the first time, Bush’s opponents could finally start hammering their talking points. And hammer they have! Reid stopped the Senate to force talk of how Bush mishandled intelligence leading up to the war. Then McCain kept coming out against torture. And then the House Democrats teamed up with some moderates and said no to the budget. And hawks started calling for an end to the Iraq occupation. And now, amidst Bush and Cheney’s odd and pathetic attacks on their attackers, Senator Feingold threatens to filibuster the extension of the expanded police and government powers granted after September 11th. Yes, it’s over for Bush when a Democrat running for President knows that it’s the right political move to stage a fight over what was once a sacred cow. Heck yeah, bring it on.
