Rove is shifting from trying to protect the president from the bitter sting of reality to focus on the politics of the party. Not that he’ll change his title or be any less influential in the White House but he sees the writing on the wall and wants to protect W’s power. In the midterm election, Democrats have a large and increasing lead over the corruption plagued Republicans. Without a rubberstamp Congress and in light of steadily declining poll numbers, the administration sees it’s tenure at the White House in jeopardy. A once united party is breaking apart under Bush’s incompetent leadership as he proves time and time again that he is out of touch with the American people in issues from Social Security, the Dubai port deal, Iraq, his administrations failure during the Katrina crisis as well as mounting legal troubles including his authorization to spy on Americans and his instigating role in the Plame affair. A fresh left leaning Congress is likely to censure and impeach the President over many of these issues and pull the purse strings getting our troops out of Iraq. Worse still, people might actually see that this was no the only route available. They might understand that there are other options besides repeated failure.
The current White House shuffle includes replacing insiders with insiders to boost rock bottom poll numbers. It is not an attempt to better understand America and give us what we want and deserve out of our leaders. Most of the shake up involves replacing senior members with other people who can more forcefully deliver the message. There is no different message and there is no changing course. All we are getting is people yelling at us louder that we are stupid for not blindly accepting failure.
Replacing Bolten with Card only served to tighten up the circle of insiders as their numbers shrink. Treasury secretary Snow is all but fired because he isn’t forceful enough in delivering the message. And who left today? The mouthpiece McClellan. There is no attempt at compromise or change in policy on the horizon. Don’t let this current faux shake up fool you.
And then there is the Rove deal. He is only giving up policy development title for the White House while keeping the title deputy chief of staff. The difference in these roles remains to be seen but I would bet my watch and warrant on his influence remaining the same. This is the man that is trying to create a one party system where he can do whatever he wants without the minimal opposition the Democrats gave the last four years. To do this he needs a strong figure head in Bush which is threatened strongly by the upcoming midterm elections. With a Democratic congress he will have to act more like a president and not an emperor. Take your pick of which roles he fails worse at.
The way he did this throughout the last four years was to paint any opposition as unpatriotic. That line has worn thin as time separates us from the events of 9/11. Rove’s traditional “with us or with the terrists” line was scaled back as early as January when he said, “At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security. Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn’t make them unpatriotic — not at all. But it does make them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.”
The deeply, profoundly, and consistently erroneous reasoning of Rove is that Democrats are living in a pre-9/11 world. It’s true that Republicans are living in a post-9/11 world where everything in the world from the bogus Social Security crisis to the bogus Iran crisis to the corrupt Bankruptcy bill to record hurricanes and tornadoes are based on two planes flying into a building.
Let them have their post-9/11 world where they have to reassure the public instead of doing anything constructive. While they are living in the past we have to look to the future and focus on what would clumsily be called a post-post-9/11 world. A world where we have to fix all the neocons mistakes.
With the number of troops dead in Iraq slowly creeping towards the loss of life at the World Trade Center, record amounts of terrorism, sky rocketing fuel costs, as well as every other important issue that doesn’t involve the Middle East America’s bloodlust is oversatiated. It is clear that the neocon agenda did not work. We are less safe thanks to their post-9/11 world. Now it is time to move on to a post-neocon world where PNAC and PMC’s don’t decide our military strategies and Drug companies don’t write our national medical bills.
Rove is rightfully worried about the fate of the party. America is sober after being drunk on fear for so long and thoroughly rejected every single issue the neocons stand for. With assistance of Tomlinson he will have to buy some more good press because empires can only change reality so much before people start realizing that down really is down and spades really are spades. The rejection of the neocon message and corruption is a rejection of Rove himself. That is why he is planning one big push for the November elections. His announcement that he is focusing more intensely on politics is a reassurance to his corporate sponsors that he hasn’t forgotten his role. He is the leader of this revolution of the minority. And isn’t that the essence of a Napoleonic complex?
