UPDATED:
Judging by the GOP response so far, I think this has taken them flat-footed. They weren't ready to back up Fat Karl on this one.
Via
MOMENT OF TRIUMPH
Bush has lost Iraq and now the GOP is
panicking. They need to unload Bush's failure on you. Bush slaughtered thousands in the middle of nowhere for nothing, and that's
your fault because you didn't support it.
"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."
-Karl Rove
[eriposte offers a translation.]
Never mind that none of this is true. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that Al Jazeera only ran the story when it happened and then moved on. Never mind that it was American conservatives who were the ones repeating a message they claimed was harmful to our troops (so they obviously never believed that, anyway) for days on end ...
and they were smiling.
Domestic criticism is what's turning Iraqis against us, they say. Not the continuing destruction of Iraq, not the constant loss of life and limb, the omnipresence of death in every family, the raiding of its resources and historical treasures, the unemployment, the absense of basic services in the most urbanized country on earth in the middle of a mesopotamian summer, none of that matters. A clip that Al Jazeera isn't running, and that Iraqis without electricity aren't watching on their dead TV's, is killing our troops.
This is marketing, the facts don't matter. What is Rove selling? Rove is selling Bush's failure to the Democrats, cheap.
Now that even Republicans in Congress are recognizing that Bush has lost Iraq and has no idea what to do, Bush's handlers and proxies have begun to prepare for his inevitable failure: blame their policies on the liberals. They have no hope for any successful outcome in Iraq and are as happy to leave the Iraqis to rot as they were to blast them for nothing in the first place.
The GOP is simply trying to unload its waste. They have no plan, they never had a plan, and now they want someone else to take the blame.
Hell, even John McCain predicted Rove was going to do something like this this week.
Now, we have seen in the past that Karl Rove is willing to jack off the superstitions of trailer trash he wouldn't share a room with for two minutes together. He is willing to stir the sewer and see what bubbles up. But he no more buys his own bullshit than he goes in for the GOP's gay-bashing or believes that Bush compromised on his judicial nominees by sending three of them home. Rove knows better, but he also knows that Red State America will buy anything that starts with "liberals" and ends with "hate America." They'll buy this story just long enough to help Bush sneak off.
The message is simply a means to an end. Rove could just as easily be saying "Mambo dogface to the banana-patch," it just doesn't fucking matter. Bush will be protected and Everything will Be Your Fault (again). And if some cracked vessel out there goes after a supposed liberal, well all the Kool Kids will have something else to cluck their tongues about and Bush will still be safe.
Bush's policies are now junk bonds and you are just collateral damage waiting to happen.
This is Enron politics. Talk it up, cash out, leave someone else holding the bill. This is what they're trying to do with Social Security, too. This is the kind of locust-act Bush the "businessman" has done all his life. They've already raided the public treasury and handed billions to their friends under the pretext of national security and Iraqi Freedom. But now that the political cost is getting high, it's time to count the money and leave someone else twisting.
That person is you.
.