When the President decided to invade Iraq there were certain Democrats that, despite some misgivings, decided they would try to help make the project work. Senator Joe Biden, for example, dropped his plans to run for President in 2004 and hoped to use his position as ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations committee to influence policy. It was not long before Biden threw up his hands in exasperation. His advice was simply ignored. It took a little longer for Republicans to start realizing the same thing. But eventually it started happening. Sens. Gordon Smith and Chuck Hagel and Rep. Walter Jones rebelled first. Others are following. It’s still a trickle. Yet, the Alberto Gonzales fiasco is threatening to become a flood.
Telephone calls yesterday to dozens of GOP lawmakers, lobbyists, and current and former Bush administration officials found almost no support for the attorney general.
And, this time, the collapse of support isn’t limited to Capitol Hill.
“Everybody at the White House . . . all think he needs to go, but the president doesn’t,” said a Republican who consulted the Bush team yesterday. Another White House ally said Bush and Gonzales are ignoring reality: “They’re the only two people on the planet Earth who don’t see it.” A third Republican intimately familiar with sentiment inside the White House said the hope is that Gonzales will leave on his own. “At some point, he’ll figure out that it’s not a sustainable situation,” the Republican said.
The scales are falling from the eyes of even the President’s closest advisers. It appears they tried to force the President’s hand when, even before Gonzales finished testifying, chief White House aides leaked to CNN that they thought Gonzales’ testimony had been a disaster and ‘like watching the clubbing of a baby seal’. But the President didn’t listen.
To be frank, we haven’t seen a President in this much trouble since Bill Clinton had to admit that he had lied to his cabinet about his involvement with Monica Lewinsky. But, in that case, the President remained popular with the electorate and effective as a policy maker. That is far from the case today. With the majority leader issuing a notice of no confidence in the President’s war strategy, the Republicans are trying to rally around the President. But their heart isn’t in it. They know Harry Reid is right. And they have no confidence in the President’s judgment on a host of issues.
We are witnessing the collapse of the Presidency. I suspect even the Republicans are shocked at the degree of rot and the level of delusional thinking coming out of the Oval Office.
What once seemed impossible, a Republican revolt against their own President, is now seeming more and more inevitable. The Gonzales affair is opening many eyes.
That fish stinks.
Since I’m reminded this week that I ‘need to get a life because I don’t GET Republican humor (thank you John McCain for that little lesson) I am left perplexed as to just what will be the tipping point where the Republicans en masse jump ship.
I would think that Paul W. is offering a great incentive with the new WSJ story – and for us the Sidney Blumenthal story via Salon which ties in Liz Cheney & Karen Hughes – and perhaps a salient point for those cute fellas like Duncan Hunter who abuse the threat of nat’l security to punch up every argument I would ask them to rationalize Liz & Riza’s roles after reading the article. So will karma rev up her engines and reward the Iraq War’s architect with leading the fall of the Bush admin? I can only hope.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/04/19/wolfowitz/?source=whitelist
We are witnessing the collapse of the Presidency. I suspect even the Republicans are shocked at the degree of rot and the level of delusional thinking coming out of the Oval Office.
More than that, I am beginning to hope we are watching the collapse of the whole elite foreign policy establishment. As one old enough to remember, this feels far different than Watergate and the end of Vietnam.
As for the Republicans, I have always thought that when the time came, it would be the Republicans who would confront Bush, much as the Argentinian establishment confronted Galtieri.
Unless unprecedented proof arises that there are literal double agents working at the highest levels of the US government…and I would not at all be surprised if that were proven true in the case of Wolfowitz…I doubt that the Ratpubs are goping to assent to impeachment this late in the game.
Tactically it does not work for them in terms of future elections…I mean, even if they lose and lose big in ’08, they will need only four years to return to virtual parity given how gullible the US electorate has shown itself to be…and morally? Give me a break. Theft, wanton murder and total incompetence have not so far been reason enough to get them to move. Why would one expect them to change now? To be truthful, these practices are the real underpinnings of this political system as it is now constituted, and the Rats, basically unencumbered by much in the way of real philosophical ideas past those of the Neanderthal fundamentalists (Free trade? Small government? Lies to help the rich get richer, not economic or political concepts. Bet on it.), are even less bothered by their existence that are the Dumbocrats.
Bush stays, hamstrung.
The LAMEST of ducks.
Unless…
Unless…
Unless someone is unmasked in the act of treason.
Then and ONLY then will this foulest of structures collapse.
Watch.
AG
past those of the Neanderthal fundamentalists (Free trade? Small government? Lies to help the rich get richer, not economic or political concepts. Bet on it.),
Powerful words, AG, and from my more recent experiences with conservative America, quite true! Why people believe this crap, and BTW why they so love their friggin guns, perplexes me constantly!
he’s a dead, dried out fish in a parched political landscape…
…can’t swim in a desert.
ITMF’sA
By the end of summer the Republicans in Congress will be desperate to get rid of the entire Bush administration. They’ll be negotiating how they can dance the quadrille and wind up with someone new in the Oval Office, which is the only way they’ll be able to win the 2008 Presidential election.
Worse, for Republican Congress critters, they know they can’t allow the Democrats to win the White House and gain control of all of the levers of investigatory power. So many Republicans in the Senate and especially the House are implicated in the corruption of the last six years that they know droves of their colleagues will be leaving the Congress to start prison terms. Their already weak position will just deteriorate further.
Rove wanted to create a permananent majority in the worst way. He managed to do it, just not the way he imagined.
I think that Booman’s argument becomes stronger when you look at specifics. The strongest argument by the impeachment pessimists has been that the votes aren’t there, as though present conditions continue indefinitely into the future.
I’d like to see pre- and post- hearing quotes from Coburn, Sessions, Specter, and other Republicans put side by side to show how quickly targets of investigation can become radioactive and alliances turn.
My only concern is that once the case against Gonzales was made and he turned into a baby seal (early in the second round), I thought that the Democrats would shift tactics and pursue information about the RNC e-mails, Rove, and Bush more vigorously than they did. I don’t understand why Schumer didn’t use his time to collect more sworn statements about people other than Gonzales from a weakened Gonzales at that moment.
The hearings also prove something else: the importance of their being public. This cannot be compromised with Rove especially. Imagine how little impact these hearings would have had if we knew about them only through transcripts.