Digby channels Sidney Blumenthal in describing how the central paradigm of this administration has been discredited, even to those who first proposed and used it.
The Imperial Presidency? Gone. The Unitary Executive? Forget it. Bush's War Presidency? Inoperative. Francis Fukuyama has disowned the NeoConservatism of which he was a major supporter. The Federal Courts have essentially declared the Presidents' military commissions as an alternative to the Geneva Conventions or legal courts 'inoperative.' What has killed all these really really bad ideas? The one really good idea that even many of the power hungry Republicans could not bring themselves to abandon. The Rule of Law. As Emptywheel pointed out, even a lot of Republicans will not abandon the Rule of Law
The entire set of ideas that were to drive the Bush administration have failed or been otherwise discredited. So what's left? The War in Iraq. That's it.
So why does Bush refuse to recognize the total failure of the War in Iraq? Because that is all that is left of his eight years in office. If he can just hang on without discussing the American evacuation from his disaster, then when the next President comes in that is a job he or she will have to do.
That sets up the Democrats for the traditional Republican attacks of "The Democrats Lost XxxxxxX." [Enter the name of a country or war of choice.]
That's all the Bush administration has left. Avoiding Impeachment for Bush and being able to say "We didn't leave Iraq, so we didn't fail there. The Democrats left, so they failed!"
Bush and the Republicans are perfectly willing to put up with the deaths of a hundred or so Americans per month and at least ten times that many severe casualties from now until 2009 just to maintain this talking point for the future.
Republicans are masters of the soft bigotry of low (self-)expectations, aren't they?
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