Quack. Quack. Quack.
In his Oct. 5 cartoon, Ramirez depicts a fatuous George W. Bush intoning in re Harriet Miers “Read my lips. I have a made a bold choice.” A disgusted aide at his side thinks, “A chicken has no lips…”.
In a savage trifecta, Bush is depicted as weak, unprincipled, and the true heir of his father’s despised political legacy.
There’s no turning back. Murder, Inc. a.k.a. the conservative Outfit, is looking for a new front man.
In a sign that Turd Blossom may be in even deeper doo-doo than we can imagine, Republicans are not responding to Rove’s efforts to impose the same lock-step unity that provided such effective cover for Jr.’s numerous mis-steps in the past.
The rightwing reaches of the blogosphere will no doubt be filled with self-serving explanations for George’s fall from grace: his personal limitations of intelligence, energy, and vision; his father’s influence; emasculation a la Laura.
But the bottom line is, despite Bush’s infinite willingness to pander to the right and enrich its adherents, he as become a political liability: scraping along at 40% approvals in the polls, inextricably linked to the disaster in Iraq, and, as befits his true core competence for accelerated failure, a lame duck only nine months into his second term.
Bush didn’t betray conservative ideals. He simply appeared weak and lost.
His capital political crime may have been his attempt to expand his personal power and influence after he was judged expendable and unnecessary.
Trying to turn his sole ownership of the Iraq catastrophe into political lemonade, Bush spoke on that tedious and resented subject again and again to little avail, and to the detriment of Republicans seeking to distance themselves from the debacle: another sign that the Rove strategy of pushing the big, bloody September 11/GWOT/national security message 110% is now a sign of Bush’s hopeless desperation, not administration boldness.
Bush was too obviously and pathetically eager to use the Katrina reconstruction billions to shore up his personal popularity and pay off his loyal supporters instead of employing them single-mindedly in the service of the conservative juggernaut’s political, ideological, and social goals.
Perhaps Bush was so desperate to create a new personal power base closer to the political center to counter conservative disdain that he and Rove grossly over calculated the independent momentum his personal charisma and political capital could create among moderates in these dark days.
With Miers, he may have made the final fatal political miscalculation that has doomed so many: he reached out to the Democrats for salvation.
Certainly he overlooked the obvious folly of turning to Harry Reid and bemused Democrats as his standing within the GOP ebbed.
It was many years and crimes too late for Bush to attempt to govern as president for the people and above party instead of rule as the stooge of conservative interests.
Disdained by conservatives, detested by Democrats, and mistrusted by independents, Bush is alone in no-man’s land.
Bush unveiled the Miers travesty — a pathetically under qualified candidate whose nomination only seems to underscore the absolute dearth of talent among true-to-the-death Bush loyalists willing to cover his soon-to-be exposed ass on the Supreme Court — only to learn that the conservative establishment is now overtly hostile to his attempts to entrench and protect his personal power.
The vitriolic response by conservative opinion is not the jerk of the leash.
It is more like the yank of the noose for a political victim now twisting slowly in the wind.
The obvious successor to Bush as the protector of the conservative faith is Dick Cheney.
There is even talk, inexplicable to me, that Cheney — that sinister, mechanically-hearted, ambulatory corpse — will lead the Republican ticket in 2008.
Even if Dick Cheney is unable to raise himself from his crypt and grunt and mumble his way through a presidential campaign, chances are he will remain the true head of the conservative shadow government — until the next chosen instrument, willing tool, and/or sacrificial victim waddles along.
Quack. Quack.
Copyright 2005 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
