Saturday, November 11, 2006

Were Bush and Rove "The Producers"?

Someone had to do it. Someone had to ask the question: Did Rove intentionally blow the 2006 midterms?

I had toyed with the same notion before the election. Even so, I think there are counter-arguments to most of the points raised in the afore-linked piece. For one thing, the exit polls do not match the "actuals" in Viriginia and elsewhere. Still, some questions are not so easily dismissed:
And of course Rove made a number of confoundingly bad decisions, dumping millions of dollars into Senate races that seemed hopeless for the Republicans -- and ultimately were -- in the solidly "blue" states of New Jersey and Maryland, where in hindsight a few dollars spent in the right ways might have salvaged the once-"red" Montana and Virginia.
The motive for such a ploy? Forcing the Dems to take the blame for a predicted economic meltdown.

I don't believe this "suicide" theory, but it's still an interesting idea to consider.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Bush et al would throw this one with their eye on the next big prize... 2008/WH. When things do not improve with democratic party control , stupid Americans will, in their neoconned opinion, be right back with the scarlet R party. Should Bush give up Rove, I might think reason is prevailing in DC but until the hip lock comes off of that relationship, nothing at all in the world changed. They are still trying to create their own reality.... a new age religion term. Know that too.

Anonymous said...

Losing the house and the senate has opened the Bush Administration to subpoena power.
Did Rove lose the elections intentionally? I seriously doubt it.

Peter of Lone Tree said...

"Losing the house and the senate has opened the Bush Administration to subpoena power."

THAT will never happen.

Joe, a recurring theme in the comments at the post you linked was, "The People were sick and tired of the scandals and corruption coming out of Washington." Hell, Yes! And how did the People know about it? The MSM! Nobody can convince me the MSM finally got a conscience and started doing their job by blasting these scandals all over the front pages.

The MSM was in on the fix.

Anonymous said...

Rove blow an election? especially one with so many potential consequences? I doubt it.

If anything, the GOP & Rovers (or, um, GROPers) seriously underestimated the amount of shifty vote-skittering that would be required to throw this election in their basket.

No doubt they tried to sway things as much as they thought they needed to. Which was obviously not enough.

The Dems votes must have actually been a landslide. Even the final "numbers" managed to kick out the grand old putrid party.

Anonymous said...

Thanks goodness I'm not the only one openly questioning WTF just happened on the neo-con's side of the aisle. Because--WTF? I keep waiting for a shoe to drop someplace. Rove et al may not have been on the ball in certain races, but their typical schemes, right down to the nasty media manipulation, went off like clockwork in Oregon, as usual. Everyone, and I mean everyone out here was braced for close vote tallies, obvious signs of fraud, and eventual court challenges, even those folks openly skeptical about the idea that Diebold, criminality and media corruption have now stolen several elections for the GOP. We were all quite shocked when it appeared that the Republicans were prepared to let the Democratic victories sit, and we heard not a peep of a legal challenge from their candidates.

I'm stumped. It doesn't track. I don't know which theory I believe about why they folded, or if I believe any of them. 'Cause a tiny part of me still thinks it's possible that little shoe is about to hit the floor.

Anonymous said...

The MSM is furiously spinning the grassroots rage against Bush. This headline from Newsweek on their latest poll:

"...but voters want Dems to chart a moderate course."

Then as you read down to the poll, what it really said was that "half of all Americans SAY Dems will take a moderate approach."
(my emphasis)

Hey, that's two entirely different things, isn't it? Then, to add insult to injury, Newsweek offers the explanations for why Reps were turned out, and isn't it odd, but CORRUPTION was not one of the choices. The whole article is about how Pelosi and Bush both have really low approval ratings and will have to be kissy-poo for the next two years. And as for the keyword IMPEACHMENT?--not mentioned once.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15667442/site/newsweek/

Assholes. What are they afraid of?

Anonymous said...

i thought the attytood piece raised some interesting points, but they missed the big picture. my response is this. one, rove is not a genius, he is a ruthless, evil bastard. in fact, pay attention folks; except for the last mid-terms, which occurred just one year after 9/11 and in the heat of war drums, rove has not won an election since bush became governor. and frankly, those texas races should be suspect.

allow me a small aside, as i love to revel in it:
REPUBLICANS HAVE NOT WON A NATIONAL ELECTION SINCE 1988!!! not fair and square, anyway.

which leads to the issue of why they didn't raise a ruckus this time. hey, yo! in 2000 they were fighting like hell to STOP the counting!! this is not trivial. they didn't push for recounts because they don't want their shenanigans exposed.

also, the two 'closest' senate races, interestingly, were the only ones that did not fall within a one or two point range of independent exit polls. this does suggest some tweaking that could be embarrassing upon discovery.

another explanation is that dems are more inclined to speak up and complain about errors such as vote flipping. there are evidently data to support this position, but we may never know.

at least the writer's of this provocative piece recognize that the stakes are just too big here. i honestly don't think anyone in the white house is willing to risk those subpoenas. they're not trivial, and i do believe they're gonna happen, and that we'll discover what we already know, and the people will ultimately turn toward impeachment, just as they did with nixon. this is how it should be; congress does our bidding, and 'our' is not just the cutting edge minds of you and me, folks. never forget; half of americans have only double digit IQs.

finally, the media is not consciously in on this 'scheme', but they are in on the progam, which is capitalist. the media, if you noticed, started almost imperceptably shifting around the time the polls showed a steady and durable unrest with the war and with bush. despite all the media's efforts, the people were still getting it! pretty impresive, if you ask me. and this was not wasted on the media, because we are, after all their audience. hence rush limbaugh's whorish admissions, and joe scarborough's insistence that 'liberal' is not a dirty word!

a small disclosure: i must confess that the notion that rove would be capable of pulling off something akin to the attytood piece really makes me laugh, it's so absurd. rove is not, i repeat, NOT a genius; he is ruthless.

i've stated all these points previously in a post here, stressing that this election was unique in important ways that would preclude and prohibit another rovian theft. the biggest way? the wave was just too damn big.

still, we do need to keep our eyes on these guys. they're spinning like their lives depend on it, because they do.

Anonymous said...

me again. just wanted to add that rove's stupid decisions about where the money went and where bush went, etc. well, do recal that rove had bush campaigning in CA, of all places (likely because it's such magnificent booty), when he should have been in FL firing up his base.

well, bush lost. a fact more people might start remembering now that the emperor has been stripped of his clothes, and oh my yes, he DOES have one puny li'l pecker. rove, too!