Five Point Plans

dr. elsewhere here

Evidently, newly anointed WH Chief of Staff Bolten has concocted a Five Point Plan to rescue Bush. Interesting how the repugs forget this concept was Stalin's brainchild for economic recovery in the USSR.

You can read the original Time article, or just review rawstory’s synopsis of the list. But I’ll take you through the points here, with my sense of just why each of these will backfire.
For what that’s worth.

1) "Deploy guns and badges" -- to play to the conservative base on illegal immigration, using the cloak of Homeland Security.
Good grief. Did the unprecedented protests teach them nothing? Resistance to their strongarm, lawnorder tactics is huge. If they deputize a bunch of swaggering wingnuts and give them weapons, it will become a wild bloodbath that will backfire in their nasty little faces.
Oh. Wait. They already deputized a swaggering wingnut and gave him weapons, and he’s in big trouble, with the polls and with the law. Clearly they miss the connection.

2) Make Wall Street happy through tax cuts.
Wall Street? This guy Bolten is supposed to be smart and he is admitting he is going to grease those greedy palms even more than they already have, while continuing to ignore all the increasingly poor and deprived working Americans? If he thinks this is what will make W’s poll numbers rise, he must be eating some very ripe yeast.

3) Brag more ("highlight the glimmer of success in Iraq").
Yeah. Right. The perfect antidote for the swaggering egos that got us into this mess: brag louder. And of course, that requires that they overlook the mess itself. Gotcha. Hey, isn’t this like the definition of “truthiness”?

4) Reclaim security by playing tough with Iran (On Iran, "Democrats will lose").
The pattern is beginning to emerge, is it not, folks? Pay no attention to the mistakes that created the need for this rescue plan; just do more of the same while assuming that the public is incapable of a learning curve. Playing tough in Iraq worked so well; the American people clearly feel safer now, especially knowing how they’ve been lied to by those entrusted to protect them. Think folks will recognize the same pattern of lying about Iran as the one that shnookered most of the country the first time? What was that line? Won’t get fooled again? Bush mangled that whole concept so badly, its appearance here as policy resembles the lisping king story of Castalian Spanish. Sort of like “nukular” becoming an acceptable pronunciation of “nuclear.”
In any case, the concept does recall that wise warning of the Republicans’ first president: Can’t fool all the people all the time. But that stuff is so lost on these creeps.

5) Court the press (offer Tony Snow of Fox News the job of White House press secretary).
Here again, if we screwed up, just do it bigger, bolder now! Yup, that’ll work.
Considering Tony Snow – as well as at least one other Fox candidate – for WH press secretary actually may be the final piece of unequivocal evidence that these guys are as stupid and incompetent and utterly clueless as we have come to recognize. Of course, we just adore them for it, as confirmation is always comforting, and it makes for such incredibly terrific comedy!
What? Do these guys really believe that making Fox News their official propaganda arm will fix their relationship with the press?? That’s like calling in the Madame of the brothel where hubby has been whoring to counsel his rocky marriage. This cynical move will only make the WH press corps (with the exception of Faux Snoozers, of course) more irritable, more aggressive, more relentless.
I can live with that, but I doubt that is the reaction Bolten is shooting for.

Don’t know about you guys, but reading this plan is actually a bit encouraging. Official stupidity actually documented as an official Five Point Plan. And every single point destined to backfire.

Of course, we have to ask ourselves if we have any reason to take it at face value, as truth. Why would they expose their plan? Especially when it is not anything like a new plan, just more of the same. Even Tony Snow as press secretary is nothing like a shift.

Perhaps the fact that these guys cannot come up with anything novel is yet more reason to feel a bit encouraged. Knowing that these idiots have chosen yet another idiot to guide them with an idiotic plan for change, which is just more of the same, is as comforting and confirming as watching Wily Coyote's face as he hangs suspended over yet another cliff. Beep beep.

Then again, they may be putting this decoy out there to distract everyone while they go about their dirty business. But double yet again, that is itself more of the same; misleading in every way possible. Their motto must be, "Never, ever shoot straight when you can think of a way to try and fake everybody off." From the minds of mafioso.

There may be still more reason to feel encouraged. The fact that, despite the powerful hold this administration has over the press, a solid 2/3 of those polled see through all the crapola anyway. That, and the fact that these dopes really have no people skills whatsoever, in terms of understanding the way folks work and then using that information to govern (dunh, whazzat?). They sure did not get the "endless occupation" factor in Iraq, nor the flowers and chocolate expectations; I can think of no reason to expect them to have any better insights into their own people. They clearly do NOT get the notion of what a working democracy means, so why should we expect them to have a clue what it means to the people of the US?

All that being said, the only thing we may have to fear now is the depth to which Rove will stoop in order to steal the upcoming elections. Diligence, folks. Stay informed and skeptical. Because for their vote stealing schemes to work, the polls have to be reasonably close; otherwise, it will be too obvious. If the polls stay this bad, Rove will be under some serious pressure to deliver wins in November over that credibility hurdle. Which means, things are going to start getting really nasty for all Democratic candidates real soon.

But I think that may even backfire, too, now. I’m hopeful that the American citizen has reached its watershed “mad as hell” moment and WILL NOT TAKE ANYMORE. The whole thing will be pretty interesting to watch.

Which also brings me to a perspective on the Dems strategies. All of us have been pretty ticked that Feingold was left to fend for himself – and us all – in his motion to censure. Everyone complains wildly about the DNC leadership not showing any backbone. But I may have mentioned before that Harry Reid is from Nevada and the guy knows how to play poker. He also knows Dems have no power in Congress right now; none, zippo, nada. There have been times when I actually thought he might be really playing the repugs, setting them up. His role in the nomination of Harriet Miers was not trivial, and he played that cool as a cucumber while Bush ending up getting red as an embarrassed chili pepper before it was all over. And the embarrassement may not be over yet, as word has slipped out that she may be next in Bolten's crosshairs.

I will say this much again: Working with the Republican leadership right now must be the most frustrating exercise in futility ever, especially for veteran Dems who not only know DC really does not and should not work the way it has been since ’01 (or since '94, really), but for everyone who wants to do the right thing for the country and their constituents. The natural tendency for anyone frustrated and faced with futility is to either lash out or retreat into numb catatonia.

I honestly do not see the Dem leadership in a catatonic state; it’s more like a holding pattern. They’re picking their battles carefully. Why lash out and send up flares, despite the polls, that the propaganda press will only destroy in their uniquely unpatriotic way? We can't do anything about it till we get some power back, so let's stay out of the line of fire as much as possible till we do. I think this might also be a reason Dems are so slow to move on Iran right now. What I see Reid doing is directing those of his party who will agree that, if we just give these nincompoops enough rope, they’ll eventually hang themselves.

The mess Bolten was hired to rescue with his pointless five points is, after all, our case in point.