Thread: Bush and Rove Blew the Election on Purpose?

Bush and Rove Blew the Election on Purpose?
Asks Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Daily News, while admitting it's a "tin-foil hat" conspiracy theory. But after a few drinks, you may start to wonder about it. How else to explain, for example, not firing Rumsfeld sooner?

By Greg Mitchell

(November 13, 2006) -- He might have been kidding, but the more you read and think about it, the more it provides a plausible explanation for the wholesale White House bungling in the closing weeks of this year’s campaign: Bush and Rove blew the midterms on purpose. How else to accept that the normally hapless Democrats not only won, but as the president put it, “thumped”?

Okay, even reporter/blogger Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Daily News, who concocted the idea -- likening it to “The Producers” plot to engineer a flop -- revealed that he had to put on his tin-foil hat first. I admit, I still don’t believe it.

But the alternative view is just as chilling: that many, if not most, of our Washington-based pundits are even more out of it than we’d guessed. How else to explain their embrace of Karl Rove-as-tactical-genius for all these years? Either they were embarrassingly wrong or ... as Bunch hints ... maybe all too correct?

Why blow the election? Go to Bunch’s blog for the full explanation, but it largely boils down to Iraq -- and the opportunity to make this a bipartisan problem as the catastrophe worsens in the months ahead.

That desire, at least, is not farfetched, even if the conspiracy theory itself is a joke. I'm reminded of a Mike Peters editorial cartoon this week that offered a new twist on Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn" principle: It showed a broken pot, labeled Iraq, with Bush pointing to a Democratic donkey and saying, "I broke it ... you own it."

Anyway, throw down a couple of tequila shots, and then, for fun and a little head-spinning, consider Bunch’s evidence for his provocative conspiracy scenario. He even asks: Why were the exit polls correct this time? Surely that proves ... something.

-- Why didn’t Bush fire Rumsfeld sooner (as members of his own party are now howling)? And, just as bad, endorse him on the eve of the election, a move certain to cost his party many seats in the House?

-- Why did he allow Cheney, again on the eve of the election, to say that not only was it still stay-the-course in Iraq, it was, in fact, "full speed ahead?"

-- Why was there no true October or November surprise? Was the conspiracy to lose the election the true "surprise?"

-- Given Bush's unpopularity, why was he sent to campaign in places where he did more harm than good and, as Bunch asks, “why did the White House suddenly make the president more visible by having more press conferences -- and thus taking more hostile questions on Iraq and other unpleasant subjects -- than at any other time in his six-year presidency?”

-- Why, surprisingly, did incumbents Conrad Burns and George Allen fail to ask for recounts when they lost narrow races -- throwing the Senate to the Democrats without a whimper?

-- Why did Rove toss resources into hopeless Senate races in such blue states as New Jersey and Pennsylvania while allowing Montana and Virginia to slip away?

-- Why did Bush’s Justice Dept. go after vulnerable Rep. Curt Weldon in the final weeks -- and how is it that a Republican source first leaked the Rep. Mark Foley scandal? The GOP lost both seats, of course.

I would add two more suspicious occurences: Why did so many conservative commentators, such as Joe Scarborough, say near the end that the Republicans “deserved” to lose power? And what happened to the Diebold vote-counting fears? Maybe Rove did “fix” the election -- but in the Democrats’ direction, so that’s why they have stopped complaining about Diebold. As Ann Coulter put it, "History was made this week! For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election."

Maybe the smoking gun in this conspiracy will be a memo from Rove to George Allen suggesting that he utter the word "macaca" whenever some dark-skinned ethnic ticks him off. Or a Ken Mehlman note to Tony Snow urging that he refer to the Mark Foley scandal as nothing but a bunch of "naughty e-mails."

Will Bunch concludes his blog post today: “Is Karl Rove not the evil genius we all thought he was, or is he brilliant beyond the reckoning power of us mere mortals? Whatever the strategery, the more we look at it, the more we think that Bush's difficult next two years may work out slightly better for him with a Democratic Congress.”

Preposterous, I know. I'm still not buying it. The more likely explanation: Even evil “geniuses” screw up -- if they were "geniuses" to start with. And, as I've been saying for three years, the public hates the war far more than the pundits and newspaper editorialists admit. Americans want out. And no one should need a tin hat to see that.

http://link.toolbot.com/editorandpublisher.com/23003

To do this you actually have to give credit to bush for having a brain. NOT!

To believe anything else requires us to believe the Architect suddenly went stupid. The candidates in my state separated themselves from Bush. One that was always very close to Bush tried desperately to appear independent, but the record took her out. No money was sent to her campaign after voting 98% of the time with Bush. What's with that? The rest (4 Repubs 1 Dem) were re-elected.

I've been saying weeks before the election that Bush was going to do this. Why would anyone be surprised? This guy is a little slow on the take. We hear at Alipac knew what the deal was. Of course Bush did all this on purpose. Who else was going to give him the amnesty he so wants?

-- Why didn’t Bush fire Rumsfeld sooner (as members of his own party are now howling)? And, just as bad, endorse him on the eve of the election, a move certain to cost his party many seats in the House?

-- Why did he allow Cheney, again on the eve of the election, to say that not only was it still stay-the-course in Iraq, it was, in fact, "full speed ahead?"

-- Why was there no true October or November surprise? Was the conspiracy to lose the election the true "surprise?"

-- Given Bush's unpopularity, why was he sent to campaign in places where he did more harm than good and, as Bunch asks, “why did the White House suddenly make the president more visible by having more press conferences -- and thus taking more hostile questions on Iraq and other unpleasant subjects -- than at any other time in his six-year presidency?”

-- Why, surprisingly, did incumbents Conrad Burns and George Allen fail to ask for recounts when they lost narrow races -- throwing the Senate to the Democrats without a whimper?

-- Why did Rove toss resources into hopeless Senate races in such blue states as New Jersey and Pennsylvania while allowing Montana and Virginia to slip away?

-- Why did Bush’s Justice Dept. go after vulnerable Rep. Curt Weldon in the final weeks -- and how is it that a Republican source first leaked the Rep. Mark Foley scandal? The GOP lost both seats, of course.

Anyone that want's the definitve answers to these questions need only read the in depth article on Karl Rove in the new issue of Vanity Fair. These tactics mirror those he is renowned for using against democrats (or anyone that threatens his "territory" for that matter) in past elections. The wedge issue (the war in Iraq this time), the leaks, and the splitting, always the splitting. His fingerprints are all over this.

Yup, He threw the election for his sister in laws amnesty that he promised. How can the Democrats say they are for working America if they go along with this? This puts there constituents jobs in competition with the illegals votes there are pandering for.

I have the very same suspicion.

Bush and the majority of Dems could not get the so called "comprehensive" immigration bill passed because there were a group of Republicans in the House standing in its way.

As you know, there is an agenda underway to merge our country with Mexico and Canada by 2010. The first phase of this plan will be to erase our borders by giving amnesty to 30 million illegals. To Bush and his neocon cronies, this is far more important than the success of the Republican party. What would be the most logical step to take to break through this deadlock? Have the Dems take over with Pelosi in the lead. Afterall, the majority of Democrats want the same thing, right? Short of a miracle, this amnesty will be pushed right on through. God help us all when that happens.

Since all the Mexicans will have dual citizenship, after an amnesty, the Mexican govt. would SURELY want a voice in our govt., along with the voices they already have, but I mean an "official" voice sitting on a commission of the LaRaza type.