Salvaging the Bush Presidency

Because the range is determined by the assumptions that you make.

Really? The range is determined by the assumptions that you make? Well, I'm glad you're here to tell us these things. Chewie, take the professor into the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.

 

[image=http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/triumph.bmp]

You are a super nerd.

 

I was built in a laboratory out of parts from lesser nerds.

 

Why are illegal aliens getting free medical from Medi-Cal and Americans have to pay for their own medical. The USA donates so much money to other countries, gives benefits to immigrants, including illegals ... I guess it's all political, and forget the average American. If you are from Mexico, and you're moving to California... welcome to the world of free medical, free credit for credit cards, and guess what, you're a minority, eventhough most of the population in California now is hispanic. I just think there are serious issues with California, and I'm sure it's happening in Texas too. Bush claims that if he put restrictions on immigration, then there wouldn't be enough people to fill jobs. I went to Jack in the box today to get an egg roll, and everybody that worked there was from mexico and most of them didn't speak english. You can tell I'm a disgruntled Californian. My egg roll was probably served by illegals. Bush needs to seriously reform immigration laws. American citizens can no longer work at Jack in Box...how are teenage American citizens making any money while they are in High School?

 

There is no question that many employers have taken advantage of undocumented labor, frequently paying them miserly wages, and often neglecting to observe many labor laws and regulations in ways they couldn't get away with if they were dealing with American workers who understood labor laws. However don't forget that many other companies don't hire undocumented workers - they simply outsource jobs to other countries. When companies can't keep labor costs down, they will often pass the cost on to the consumer. That means, for example, the higher turnaround that might come with certain low-skill jobs will mean we will all pay more for a lot of things which we've grown used to getting for cheap.

 

I wonder what Cheney would say about this:

http://boards.theforce.net/ASP/post.asp?brd=10320&topic=26353564


For Bush to salavage his presidency, him and his administration (especially Cheney) need to be honest and open to the public, and wipe out all the lackeys (like Gonzalez) to replace them with competent individuals.

 

"There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? ... It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. ... And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? ... Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."

Who said this and when?

Dick Cheney, 1994.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

 

THAT'S the link I meant! Wow, I need more sleep.

 

Check it out on CNN dudes. Karl Rove stepped down.

Paint me bewildered.

 

Awesome, I heard about this on the car ride to work.

He's off to a more lucrative music career as MC Rove.

 

Technically, he announced that he will step down at the end of the month.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Well, whichever. Considering British and Canadian politicians announce they will step down nearly a year in advance, this is by comparison quick turnaround.

I mean, if we want to get even MORE technical about it, he says he's apparently wanted to leave since this time last year.

 

Another rat leaving the sinking ship, and presumably will make every effort to avoid further congressional subpoenas....

Seriously, however, Rove was extremely overrated. Here's a nice editorial that puts things in perspective.... makes him look about as intelligent as a potato:

Not the legacy he had in mind

Karl Rove will be remembered for two things from his time at the White House: incompetence and duplicity.
Michael Tomasky

Karl Rove's legacy? I have my own ideas about it, but let's start by asserting that his place in the history books will not be quite the one he envisioned for himself.

During the 2000 campaign, Rove was fond of saying that he thought of George Bush as today's William McKinley, the Republican who won the 1896 presidential election handily over the Democrat William Jennings Bryan. McKinley's victory ushered in an era of GOP dominance that lasted the better part of 35 years, until Franklin Roosevelt came along. Rove predicted that Bush's victory would do the same. The brains behind this paradigm shift, it went without saying, was Rove himself, who would be credited as the genius who kick-started a new era in which America embraced conservatism and fully and finally rejected anything having to do with the Democratic party.

Well, now. That's going well for him, isn't it?

Instead, Rove leaves two other legacies. They are incompetence and duplicity. It's hard to know which is worse. Actually, no it isn't. The duplicity has been worse, but let's emphasise here his incompetence, because it is operatic. As has so often been the case in America these last seven years, the facts are completely at odds with the cultivated image.

Let's remember first of all: Rove, and Bush, did not win the 2000 presidential election. Al Gore won the popular vote. Gore ran a mostly pretty bad campaign on the basis of mostly pretty bad advice. And still he won, by 500,000 votes. Were it not for a poorly designed ballot in one county in Florida - not whining; just pointing it out - that enticed many elderly Jews into voting for Pat Buchanan, Bush's defeat would have been clear. He and Rove would have been sent home and forgotten.

So Bush won the election in the supreme court. Well, that's the way it goes. We had to accept the court's verdict as a country and go forward. But the fact remains that Bush won that election by five votes, the five supreme court votes that installed him in the White House. Nothing Karl Rove did got him those votes.

So Rove engineered only one successful presidential election. By a bare 3 million votes (or just 70,000 votes in Ohio, if you care to count it that way). Against a mediocre candidate who ran another bad campaign. For an incumbent president during wartime. Not really a feat for the ages, but okay, a win is a win.

So what did Rove do with that win? He pushed his president to stake his "political capital," as Bush famously said during a post-election press conference, on dismantling social security. And yes, Rove really pushed it.

It was an unpopular idea from the start. It never polled well, and it made congressional Republicans very nervous. The White House never even produced a piece of actual legislation, but Bush spent the first six months of his new term travelling the country and giving speeches praising the marvels of private accounts.

The polls didn't budge. By late April, early May, it was obvious that this scheme was going nowhere. But no - Karl was just certain things were going to change any minute now! After all, it was written on the tablets of history! Bush was McKinley! The realignment was coming!

Then came Katrina. Rove's specific role in this debacle remains a bit of a mystery, but let's put it this way: His McKinley was out in Arizona giving speeches, yukking it up with hand-picked audiences of senior citizens, cutting a birthday cake with John McCain and blithely strumming a guitar with a country-and-western singer, while American citizens were dying in New Orleans. Rove, one had been led to believe, was a genius at "op

 

Although I agree with the sentiment of that article Tina, I'm not sure I agree with it's conclusions.

Certainly, Karl Rove's strengths have not been in far-sighted policy. At all.

But I think he's been effective -- absurdly so -- in actual campaigns. The article I think points rightly to Gore running a bad campaign... he was simply a bad candidate as far as an election was concerned. Not dynamic, not inspirational, had little charisma.

I'm not so convinced about Kerry. Kerry, I think, had SOME charisma. He didn't have it in spades, but he had something. He wasn't as good a candidate as one or two in the Democratic race this year, but I really think he was the top pick last year. And the supposed "mis-steps" he made were really middling compared with the administration.

I mean come on: John Kerry was essentially not elected, some would say, for mis-speaking once or twice. But he tore Bush apart in the first debate and still came out on top in the next two.

People just didn't bother to listen. I mean, debates had been decisive before with Gerald Ford. For gosh sakes, Bush actually told people that "liberals get into your head" and nobody said a damned thing!

Rove was able to recognize the voters DELIBERATELY LOWERED the bar for his candidate. MAybe it was because of 9/11. Maybe it was because of his usually meek persona where he often made fun of himself. Regardless, Rove was able to observe the double-standard large amounts of the public gave Bush and capitalized on it. Whatever Kerry did wrong was always several times worse than anything Bush did wrong. Willingly or unwillingly, the media pundits played right into this script, and pundits can be pretty powerful. The reporters who just report the news are just doing thier jobs. The reporters giving sit-down interviews with the actual people can, sometimes, do thier jobs even better if they hold feet to the fire. But these fools who get up and give thier "expert" opinions altered perceptions and missed the boat consistently. That's not just Hannity, O'Reilly, et all: that's CNN I'm talking about too, and the network news.

Karl Rove knows his business and knos his constituency. If he was just kept around for campaigns, I think he's downright dangerous. He's able to gain votes by appealing to prejudices and shaping the topic of the moment to appear as if reality is fitting those prejudices. I mean Kerry was a flip-flopper? People still BELIEVE that crud... and here comes Romney who does it several times worse and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts if he's in people won't be harping on it nearly as much. I mean, they shouldn't be anyway (and the Clinton machine might lower the debate to that level), but still. How can you explain Bush's approval ratings going up right in the middle of when his own policies are abject failures? And people got ON BOARD for these policies: they were popular! Were this a Democrat, they'd be being impeached right now.

I believe the fact Bush remains afloat is due to the very image Rove was able to give him, to ensure he'd always have loyalty from fools who are interested in ideology and faux-manliness before actual performance, and temporary support from those who approach with open minds and only realize after the campaign is over how much of what was said that garnered thier support was total BS.

 

Well said Gonk.

IMO, the article, like many others, fails to note that since the realignment in 1968, our country has leaned Republican in national elections. Again, with SO many states leaning Republican no matter who the Democrats put up, the Democrats have been at an immediate disadvantage in national elections. Although I think recently the northeast and west have solidified blue making it only a few states for the Democrats to win....indeed that political realignment that Rove didn't have in mind in that it galvanized certain areas against the GOP much like the 60s solidified certain areas for them.

 

Thanks '77.

One of the big things the article didn't mention was how Bush won against John McCain in the first place. Which given McCain's superiority in every way, shape or form was rediculous. The man should never have won his NOMINATION, let alone the presidency.

I have a dreaded, gut feeling that we've not seen the last of Karl Rove. Something tells me in 4 years, if that, we'll see him chumming around with Newt Gingritch.

I'm sure those two will have a LOT to talk about.

If that happens, you might as well give them the presidency already, because Newt can talk the talk already, and a lot of people love the crap that Rove loves to dish.

 

Gonzales resigns?

 

Hmm. An unpopular republican president in the middle of an unpopular civil war with his closest advisors quickly leaving the White House over a scandel at the highest level of government...does this mean my time machine is working?

 

I'll make one prediction regarding Gonzales.

There will be no confirmation hearings for his replacement. Any hearings would be a massive circus, from which Bush has nothing to gain, and if he simply makes a recess appointment, it will last until a few days before his term ends.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Right as usual, Kimball.

The casualties of the liberal-engineered pogrom against the Bush administration keep mounting:

Tenet
Rumsfeld
Bolton
Rove
Gonzales
Libby
Francis Harvey
Peter Pace
Jim Nicholson
Michael Brown
Harriet Miers
etc.

 

Nailed it!

Also, I don't think President Bush is going to make a recess appointment on this one.

 

I heard Chertoff.

 

Bush is the new Nixon.

 

Well picked, farraday. For that I will give you VIP status; the kind normally reserved for former mods!

E_S

 

Congratulations, Farraday!

Well, I have to join the chorus saying "Good riddance." Even the most hard-core Republican couldn't find any reason to defend this guy.

I'm not sure about Bush being the new Nixon, though. Warren Harding, maybe. I still think Cheney is by far the more corrupt and 'evil' of the two (if evil is the word for it) and that he's likely behind most of the administration's scandals.