The right wing "mirror image" disinformation technique

This is an excellent discussion of Rovian disinformation tactics by Billmon. Eric Cantor was practicing this tactic when he announced the strange story of the bullet that apparently fell from the sky into a window in a building some of his campaign adviser groups use.

Spock with a Beard: The Sequel
This is the beginning two paragraphs

For some years now, I’ve been morbidly fascinated by the political dark arts -- especially the very dark art of disinformation: the systematic creation and dissemination of false narratives designed to discredit your opponents and/or drive undecided audiences away from their cause.

The difference between disinformation and just plain lying is in the scope of the enterprise: A lie is intended to conceal a specific truth (e.g. "I did not have sex with that woman"). Disinformation, on the other hand, is aimed at constructing an entire alternative reality -- one in which the truth can find no foothold because it conflicts just not with a specific falsehood, but with the entire fabric of the false reality that has been created. It puts the "big" in big lie, in other words.

Republican conservatism is dead. Rove was a key architect of its death.

James Moore has written an open letter to Karl Rove, a key architect of the current set of disasters that afflict America. As a part of that letter, he explains why the conservative philosophy as applied by Rove, Gingrich and Bush is so very wrong. Rove and his crew are all about gaining power, not making government work.

See, here's the deal, Karl buddy, government is about service not power. If it doesn't serve the people, they reject it. When Katrina happened, the country saw what you and W had been doing. You used every institution of government to acquire more political power. All of the institutional knowledge from experienced employees and all of the non-believers were kicked out. Government agencies became largely dysfunctional and Katrina was the first time the covers were pulled back to show what you had done. All of that suffering, too, will be your legacy.

If you were so smart, you would have seen that politics, politics, politics, and no policy were bound to lead to your destruction. The only policies you and your people instituted were those that eliminated regulation and allowed near chaos to unfold. I'd put your pal Phil Gramm's Commodity Futures Trading Act under that heading.....the law that led to unregulated credit derivative swaps and has, consequently, led us to an economic precipice. I don't want to bring up Enron, but, what the hell? Remember how Gramm got energy futures trading deregulated and all of those people lost their investments but Bush got energy policy advice and campaign cash from Enron CEO Ken Lay and all of the other big dawgs on the bayou?

The truth is, Karl, every damned thing you did was wrong. It was for the wrong reasons and led to the wrong results. And half of what you did was based on lies. You still seem to think that if you lie loudly and long enough you will sound authoritative and people will begin to believe. But now not even Bill O'Reilly is buying your crap any more. Look back at your decisions and then try to tell yourself Bush and you are not responsible for the current crisis that threatens our very republic. It's all yours. We may have the leader now who can turn this around but it will be difficult. At a minimum, you are no longer a meaningful voice in the American political discourse and that gives me more hope.

I'd add one more thing to Moore's letter. The conservatives want more than power. They also want profit, and they see government as a massive source of money from which they can personally profit. Of course, that's easier if you get power over the government and do not recognize that government is about service to the people. That is the Libertarian strand of conservatism.

The point is that Rove, together with Bush and Cheney and so many like them, have placed a stake into the heart of Republican conservatism. It is now dead. The election of Barack Obama means the end of conservatism, and the Republicans know it. Why else would the Congressional Republicans ask their constituents for ideas to recreate an effective conservatism for the twenty-first century?

It's time for the media to stop claiming America is a center-right nation. It's not. It's a centrist pragmatist nation that is much to big for the limited ideology of conservatism to deal with, and Karl Rove is a key architect is proving that fact.

Rove criticizes McCain campaign management

Karl Rove is now criticizing the McCain campaign management a month before the election. Perhaps Karl feels he has to since FOX is paying him as an analyst. Whatever - it is interesting to hear an expert express his opinion.

• Rove can't understand why the McCain camp closed down the Michigan campaign so publicly. It caused a great deal of disruption inside the Michigan Republican Party because of the way it was done.
  
• Rove thinks it strange that McCain camp insiders would speak so publicly about their plans to shift the focus of the McCain campaign from the economy and instead go after Obama for his character traits. It's not something that the press or the Obama camp should be given advance waring of. But if it is done, it should be accompanied by a positive economic message. Obama doesn't publicly explain why they are presenting any given message.
  
• Rove also said that if the election were held right now, Obama would win it with at least 273 electoral votes, primarily because of the economic situation. But the campaign is highly fluid and still has 30 days left to go.

Those are interesting observations.

My own opinion is that the most interesting observation is that the McCain camp is leaking strategic reasons for their behavior. That's a characteristic of an organization which is under a great deal of pressure, appears to be failing to achieve its goals, and as a result it's members are exhibiting poor morale. It's a dead giveaway of poor overall leadership in an organization under stress.

Good leadership may not be able to change the outcome of the effort, but good leaders can keep morale up even as the effort fails. You get high morale in an organization where everyone feels they belong to a team that is working together even though they may not be successful. That isn't happening with the McCain campaign.

Some of the individuals in such an organization feel that they have to justify the fact that they are doing everything thing they personally can to win the election, but that they can see their individual efforts are not enough. They are leaking now because if they wait until the election results are in, no one will believe they say it coming.

The management of the McCain campaign is a reflection of John McCain's personality and his management style. I'd be extremely interested in finding out how McCain has treated ex-Senator Phil Gramm since his unfortunate "This is a mental Recession" comment, especially considering McCain's obvious Contempt for inferiors and his anger issues.

The post-election analysis books are really going to be interesting next year.

Bush/Rove played politics while New Orleans drowned

Remember the story of how Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Bush played out the same story as New Orleans drowned. It has been clear for nearly three years that the disaster when Katrina hit New Orleans was made immeasurably worse by the incompetence and delay of the Bush White House. But just how bad it really was simply wasn't told by the media.

Now Paul Alexander has written a book about Rove in the White House and Salon excerpted one chapter that tells about New Orleans. The entire Salon article is well worth reading, but here is just one searing story.

Remember when Bush went on TV from 17th street in New Orleans and promised to rebuild the city? Remember seeing signs of construction in the picture behind him? It was all a lie made up for the camera. Here is the real story from Mary Landrieu.

Of all of the stories and subplots, there would be one that, in many ways, symbolized the whole of Katrina, what it revealed about the Bush administration, and how it would affect the lives of so many people. On Friday, Mary Landrieu had been with Bush and Blanco as they toured the 17th Street Canal, where, at last, major work had commenced to repair the damage that had been caused when the levee broke. "Then, on Saturday," Landrieu says, "George Stephanopoulos called and asked to do an interview with me, and I said, 'George, I'm tired of doing interviews. I have to work. And nothing you are airing is accurately showing what's going on down here.' He wanted to go to the Superdome, and I said, 'We still have people stranded on their roofs. If you want to tell the right story, I will help you tell the right story. You get a helicopter and I'll go up and I will show you what is actually happening. It's awful what's happening at the Superdome, but the reason the people can't understand the story is because the entire region is under 20 feet of water. People can't get into the Superdome to help. They can't get out. People are drowning in their homes.'

"So George and I went up in the helicopter and for three hours his jaw was dropping. Then I said, 'George, before we finish I have to show you one positive thing because I can't send you back to Washington to produce a story that shows nothing but devastation and disaster.' So I told the pilot to tack right so I can show George the 17th Street Canal and the work that was going on there. I swear as my name is Mary Landrieu I thought that what I saw with the president was still there -- people working, trucks, sandbags, everything. Then I looked down and saw one little crane. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed me through my heart. I lost it." There, in the cabin of the helicopter, as they flew above the breached canal below them, Landrieu sat devastated.

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life."

The real story is that instead of helping the people of New Orleans, Bush and Rove planed to make the disaster worse and then blame the Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and the Black Democratic Mayor, Ray Nagin. While the White House sat on its hands doing nothing and sending nothing except empty promises, they were on the phones to the media spreading lies about the failures of Governor Blanco and the Louisiana government.

This is pure Rove, and his gutterslime accomplice George Bush. To them, politics is always more important than mere human lives.

Rove's misdeeds are catching up to him

Is Karl Rove going to skate on paying for his crimes? Maybe not. dday reports how the net is closing in around him.

CLOSING IN... Karl Rove has been extremely slippery with what he was able to get away with while in service at the White House, but over the past couple weeks events have probably made him gulp and pull the collar away from his neck a couple times. Same with his former bosses.

dday then goes on to detail some of Rove's currently pressing problems:

• Most recently we have have Scott McClellan revealing that Bush and Cheney gave the go-ahead to Scooter Libby to selectively leak contents of the 2002 Iraq NIE. It was this release of the classified NIE that resulted in revealing the identity of an active CIA agent, Valerie Plame. This leads to the next item:


• U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (The federal Prosecutor in the Plame case) might be ready to talk about allegations that Rove was working to get him fired before he could prosecute Tony Rezko.


• Then there is the pressure growing on Rove for answers regarding his role in the railroading of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.


• The railroading of Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman is rapidly unravelling, and all indicatrions are the Karl Rove was in the center of that action.

The dday article gives details of each of those investigations. Here is how he wraps his article up:

This leads back to Rove - the Siegelman case, the politicization of US Attorney positions, firing prosecutors who wouldn't play ball, leaking classified information in the Plame case. Rove is a slippery creature. But there are a lot of investigations all happening at once.

If dday is right, it's about damned time.

Rove refuses to deny involvement in Siegelman prosecution

From Talking Points Memo we get this video of Karl Rove ducking and weaving to avoid confirming or denying his own participation in the selective prosecution of Governor Don Siegleman.

He says he has offered Congress several ways to get at the facts of his involvement in the (selective) prosecution of Don Seigleman. What he doesn't point out is that none of those alternatives ways to get information include him speaking under oath in ways that could be criminal if he is caught lying. He'll do or say anything as long as what he says is NOT under oath.

That sure sounds like an admission of guilt to me.

---

Has Rove abandoned the right to not testify under oath by making the statement above? Mark Kleiman points out that "in general the holder of the privilege can forfeit that privilege by making elements of the otherwise privileged communication public, or allowing them to be made public."

Or is Rove simply depending on being able to tie the issue up in court until after the inauguration of the next President and then moving with Bush to Bush's secure location in Paraguay which includes a Paraguayan-passed law that says individuals on that ranch cannot be extradited for Human Rights Violations.

---

Emptywheel weighs in on Rove's claim that the President is going to assert Executive Privilege with regard to this new subpoena:

It's answering questions about the other politicized prosecution that several witnesses have recently sworn that Rove was involved in: that of Bob Kjellander.

I also can't help but wonder whether Karl wants to limit testimony to Siegelman because of something he noticed on HJC's website. HJC has put PatFitz's QFRs right there alongside all the material on politicized prosecutions. The only thing PatFitz mentioned regarding politicized prosecutions had to do with the revelations that have since come out in the Rezko trial--revelations that put at least 3 people, some of them solidly corrupt Republicans like Turdblossom, on the record with hearsay evidence about Rove working to fire PatFitz. And since Rove has already sent his BFF Michael Isikoff out to figure out what evidence there is against him, it sure seems like Rove doesn't want to testify about the conversations he had with Bob Kjellander about firing Patrick Fitzgerald.

But this is one area that has the evidentiary justification of the Siegelman case (several people, also including Republicans, with hearsay evidence stating Rove was acting improperly). Like the Siegelman case, it pertains to politicized prosecutions.

But it also pertains to the USA purge, which makes Rove's claim to executive privilege pertinent again.

Emptywheel makes a good case that Rove is scared but just blowing smoke about Executive Privilege.

AG Mucasey won't enforce Congress' subpoena, though. Congress is going to have to do that itself.

Rove previews the attack on Obama

Karl Rove writing for the Wall Street Journal, offers an "analysis" of the results of the New Hampshire primary that contains elements of the pending attacks on Obama. Josh Marshall highlights the racial stereotyps that Karl deftly drops into what pretends to be analysis:

in the course of a single column Rove manages to flag Obama's "trash talking", "his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard", and the alleged fact that "he is often lazy."

Then Karl deftly attacks Obama, first describing what he tried to do, then explaining why he failed.

while Mr. Obama can draw on the deep doubts of many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton, he can't close out the argument. Mr. Obama is an inspiring figure playing a historical role, but that's not enough to push aside the former First Lady and senator from New York. She's an historic figure, too. When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.

Mr. Obama began to find his voice at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, when he took four deliberate swipes at the Clintons. He called for Democrats to tackle problems "that had festered long before" President Bush, "problems that we've talked about year after year after year after year."

He dismissed the Clinton style of campaigning and governing, saying "Triangulating and poll-driven positions . . . just won't do." He attacked Mrs. Clinton on Iraq, torture and her opposition to direct presidential talks with Syria and Iran. Then he rejected a new Clinton era by saying, "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s." It deftly, if often indirectly, played on the deep concerns of Democrats who look at the Clinton era as a time of decline for their party and unfulfilled potential for their cause.

But rather than sharpen and build on this message of contrast and change, Mr. Obama chose soaring rhetoric and inspirational rallies. While his speeches galvanized true believers at his events, his words were neither filling nor sustaining for New Hampshire Democrats concerned about the Clintons and looking for a substantive alternative.

And Mr. Obama, in his own way, is often as calculating as Mrs. Clinton. For example, he was the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to use a teleprompter to deliver his Iowa and New Hampshire election-night speeches. It gave his speeches a quality and clarity that other candidates, speaking from notes or the heart, failed to achieve. But what he gained in polish, he lost in connection.

Like all good propaganda, there is truth in what Karl says. But this also lays out the framework, at least in part, for the Republican attack on Obama should he win the Democratic nomination for President.

I had thought until the New Hampshire Primary that the nominations of each party would be clear after the massive primary fiesta that will happen February 5th, but listening to how the various candidate are having to triage which states they can win with little effort and don't need to spend money on, which states they cannot win and don't need to spend money on, and then planning the advertising spending for the ones that are left, I no longer think that the answers will be presented that soon. But they will be known by the middle of March. That's still only about ten weeks away.

After that the uncontrolled 527 organizations will know which Democrat to attack. And they will. The push polls by Huckabee supporters against Mitt Romney have already started in Michigan, (Republican primary in five days) and by Mitt Romney in South Carolina against Huckabee (or maybe vice versa), since the Republican primary there is only nine days from now. John McCain was apparently a target of push polls in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney has reported that he has been a target of push polls in South Carolina, allegedly from Huckabee supporters. Fred Thompson reports that pro-Huckabee push polling has occurred in South Carolina.

I haven't found anything in the first four Google pages about push polling in the Democratic races. This is a republican phenomenon, and so far all their targets are internal to the Party. When the primaries are resolved, all those Republican dirty tricks will be aimed at Democrats. Plan on it.

See my prior posts

• And while we are discussing nasty politics...
  January 04, 2008


• 2008 will be the nastiest election in memory
  January 01, 2008

The D.C. Punditry has Stockholm Syndrome

Wikipedia defines Stockholm Syndrome as "a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger (or at least risk) in which the hostage has been placed." Kidnap victims, for example have been known to become emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defend their captors and their motives after they were freed.

The victim, in other words, becomes an emotional captive of their victimizer.

Glenn Greenwald describes the relationship between Karl Rove and the the D.C. Pundits thus:

Rove's function is to manipulate the media, conceal information from them, and induce them to say what is politically beneficial to the President. In a world where political journalism performs its most basic functions, media manipulators like Rove are the natural enemy of journalists. But for our pundit class, Karl Rove is the North Star of what they do -- he provides their instructions, their leaks, their scoops, their access. And as the purveyor of Beltway political power, he is their most admired leader.

If you view the D.C. Pundits as the victims and Karl Rove as their victimizer, then we can really only assume form their slavish attention to every word Rove says as though spoken by a God or a genius then the D.C. Pundit Corps must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

An overall view of the Rove phenomenon.

Karl Rove really has had a remarkable career. He is largely responsible for the degree to which Texas politics shifted from control by the Democrats to control by the Republican party. Had he left it at that, his reputation would be assured. But he moved on to the national scene and failed to get the support he needed there. Today his reputation is in tatters, particularly within the Republican Party. Here's the story.

Before Rove became a force in Texas politics the ground was being prepared by John Tower and George H. W. Bush. After them Rove hit his stride. His effect on Texas Republican political campaigns was nothing less than phenomenal. He was the right man at the right time. Things were ready for him, he understood what could be done and he pulled together the resources and won elections.

Then he went with George W. bush to Washington, where his campaign skills remained powerful, but his lack of policy and administration skills together with Bush's inattention to governing has led to results for the national Republican Party that are shaping up to be as remarkably bad as Rove's early campaign and political efforts were successful. Each of those periods will be discussed here.

Texas Republicans - pre-Rove

The Texas I grew up in during the 1950's and 1960's was all Democratic Party. Conservative, racist, but Democratic in organization. Political battles were fought out in the Democratic Primary between conservative Democrats and liberal Democrats.

That began to change when Lyndon Johnson ran for both Vice-President and for his Senate seat in 1960 and won both. When he took the Vice-President job, the Senate seat was opened up for a special election in 1961, and an obscure college government teacher from Wichita Falls named John Tower won the Senate seat - as a Republican!
The next Senate election was 1964, and the Republican nominee was a politically well-connected oil executive, George H. W. Bush. He lost to the Democrat, but in 1966 won a seat in the House which he held for two terms. Nixon convinced him to give up that seat in 1970 and run for Senate, but he was defeated by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen.

This was really where the takeover of Texas by the Republican Party started. John Tower, as the Texas Republican with a state-wide office, spent his time in office (1961 until 1985 when he retired, to be replaced by Phil Gramm) building the Texas Republican Party both financially and institutionally.

Rove and the Republican take-over of Texas

John Moritz, staff writer at Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote yesterday about the Rove-inspired Republican takeover of Texas.

Before Karl Rove was the architect of the George W. Bush presidency, he was the chief designer and construction manager of the Republican takeover in Texas, allies and adversaries of the outgoing White House chief political strategist agreed Monday.

"He was absolutely the driving force dating back to the late '70s and early '80s when he helped recruit candidates and hone the party's message," said Reggie Bashur, a Republican operative in Austin who has known Rove for more than 20 years. "He clearly saw the inflow of population to the suburbs of Texas, and recognized early on that that population would be inclined to vote Republican."

Democratic strategist Kelly Fero agreed that Rove, who drew the blueprints for Bush's two successful bids for Texas governor and for both campaigns for the White House, helped cement the GOP's lock on Texas politics.

"He certainly deserves a lot of the credit," Fero said after Bush announced the departure of his longtime friend and aide. "But it's remarkable how big a genius you can appear to be when your timing is good."

Implicit in Fero's reaction was the notion that Texas was ripe for partisan makeover as the old-line Democrats began fading from the scene and leaving the largely conservative Texas voters more at home with the new breed of Republicans who were eager to show them the door. But Bashur said that Rove's vision and determination had helped to accelerate the demise of the Texas Democrats.

"It's one thing to see it coming," Bashur said. "It's another to develop a plan, articulate a message and find the candidates."

Rove then went on to manage a number of key political campaigns in Texas:

The first was Dallas oilman Bill Clements' first run for governor in 1978, Eppstein said. At the time, no Republican had occupied the Governor's Mansion since Reconstruction, but Clements won a narrow victory by running as a plain-spoken outsider with business sense.

Eppstein said that Rove's next shrewd move came in the early 1980s when then-Democratic congressman Phil Gramm, a College Station conservative, fell out of favor with the more liberal party leaders in Washington. Rove helped persuade Gramm to resign his seat, switch parties and run to regain his seat as a Republican. The gambit worked, and the notoriety helped put Gramm in a position to run for and win a U.S. Senate seat in 1984.

Although Clements lost his bid for re-election in 1982, Rove helped him recast his crusty image as a more friendly grandfatherly type for his successful comeback in the 1986 governor's race.

With Democrats still in solid control of Texas politics in 1993, Rove signed on with Kay Bailey Hutchison, then the state treasurer, when the other U.S. Senate seat was vacated by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen's move to become U.S. treasury secretary. In a special election, Hutchison routed the Democrat appointed to replace Bentsen.

Rove's next big campaign came when Bush challenged popular Democrat Ann Richards in the 1994 governor's race. The former president's son followed a highly disciplined campaign that seldom strayed from his core message. [Snip]

Jim Moore, a former broadcast journalist in Austin and the co-author of two books about Rove, said that while the high-profile races received the most attention, it was Rove's efforts on behalf of candidates farther down the ballot that ensured his enduring clout.

"It got so that nobody who was a Republican in Texas who ran for office didn't seek the counsel of Karl Rove," Moore said.

"And by the time Karl left for Washington, D.C., there wasn't a Democrat left standing under the Texas sky."

Rove's years in Washington.

James Carville wrote an article (published in the Financial Times) entitled "How Karl Rove lost a generation of Republicans."

Mr Rove picked up seats in what was an almost historically impossible context in 2002. Then in 2004, he engineered one of the most remarkable feats in American politics. He got Americans to re-elect a president who they really did not want to re-elect. Even the Republican defeat in 2006 was predictable and well within the range of historical norms so, by this sport’s standard of winning and losing, there is still no black mark on Rove’s record. [Snip]

There is no doubt that Mr Rove won elections. He has perhaps one of the most remarkable win-percentages in modern American politics. [Snip]

If only things were so neat and simple. The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.

A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government. [Snip]

The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.

Mr Rove's famous electoral strategy – focusing on the Republican base first – is also largely responsible for a shift in international public opinion against the US. It would not be fair to blame Mr Rove for the Iraq war. But it is clearly fair to blame his strategy for the Terry Schiavo fiasco and the Republicans’ adherence to the policies and doctrines of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson. The world and now most of the US are contemptuous of the theocratic underpinnings of the policy Mr Rove ushered into government. [Snip]

Mr Rove was the architect of social security reform, immigration, the hiring and firing of justice department officials and the placement of literally thousands of ideologically driven buffoons throughout the US government. As deputy chief of staff he was also responsible for handling the White House post-Katrina reconstruction efforts. On these actions, history has already rendered its judgment on Mr Rove. And, as we say in Louisiana, “it ain’t pretty”.

Summary of Rove's career

So the Rove story starts with him walking into a changing political climate in Texas which he then took tremendous advantage of. Then he moved on to the national scene with his political creation, George W. Bush. He was expected to live up to his Texas reputation when on the national scene.

However, on the national scene, both Rove's abilities and his weaknesses came into play. An effective President could have used his abilities and prevented his liabilities from damaging the Administration and the Republican Party, but Bush 43 had and has no interest in or understanding of governing. In addition, neither Bush nor Rove really care about the future of the Republican Party. The result of their mutual ineptitudes and disinterests is well described by James Carville.

Rove may have a third, post-bush-Presidency chapter in his career, but whatever degree of success he has from now on will depend on him working for someone who can adjust for his severe weaknesses in policy, administration, and attitudes of cooperation with other politicians. Whether he will work for Fred Thompson or someone else under the kinds of restrictions he needs remains to be seen.

More on Rove - the Republicans don't like him either

David Frum has published an Editorial in The New York Times entitled "Building a Coalition, Forgetting to Rule." David Frum is, of course, and ex-Bush speech writer and a fellow at the Neocon American Enterprise Institute.

AS a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question.

The question he answered so successfully was a political one: How could Republicans win elections after Bill Clinton steered the Democrats to the center?

The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question: What does the nation need — and how can conservatives achieve it? [Snip]

Instead of seeking solutions to national problems, “compassionate conservatism” started with slogans and went searching for problems to justify them. To what problem, exactly, was the faith-based initiative a solution?

This was a politics of party-building and coalition-assembly. It was a politics that aimed at winning elections. It was a politics that treated the problems of governance as secondary. But of course governance is what incumbents get judged on — and since 2004, the negative verdict on President Bush’s governance has created a lethal political environment for Republican candidates.

David explains that Karl Rove practiced "political polarization" rather than "Wedge Politics."

Wedge politics unites a large constituency on one side, while splitting the coalition on the other side. In the 1970s, crime was a wedge issue: pushing white urban Democrats away from their black and liberal New Deal allies. In this strict sense, the only wedge issue Mr. Rove deployed was immigration, and he deployed it against his own side, dividing business donors from the conservative voting base.

Polarization, however, is Karl Rove’s specialty. He united his own base on one side — and united his opponents on the other. Al Gore and John Kerry each won 48 percent, the best back-to-back performance by a losing party since the 19th century. Play-to-the-base politics can be a smart strategy — so long as your base is larger than your opponents’.

But it has been apparent for many years that the Democratic base is growing faster than the Republican base. The numbers of the unmarried and the non-churchgoing are growing faster than the numbers of married and church-going Americans. The nonwhite and immigrant population is growing at a faster rate than that of white native-borns. The Democrats are the party of the top and bottom of American society; the Republicans do best in the great American middle, which is losing ground.

Mr. Rove often reminded me of a miner extracting the last nuggets from an exhausted seam. His attempts to prospect a new motherlode have led the Republican party into the immigration debacle.

In my brief service as a speechwriter inside the Bush administration, I often wondered why it was that skeptical experts on issues like immigration could never get even a hearing for their point of view. We took the self-evident brilliance of our plans so much for granted that we would not even meet, for example, with conservative academics who had the facts and figures to demonstrate the illusion of Rovian hopes for a breakthrough among Hispanic voters. We were so mesmerized by the specious analogies between 1996 and 1896 that we forgot that analogies are literary devices, not evidence.

In 2006, Republicans and conservatives paid the price for this we-know-best attitude. I fear that we will pay an even higher price in 2008.

While I admit that I am personally suspicious of anything that David Frum writes or says, this seems like a pretty straight forward analysis of how Rove has operated and what the results have been.

So why does the Bush White House refuse to gather information from outside experts? The answer is "attitude." They have a bad case of the "Not invented here" attitude. A story told by Dick Armey to NJosh Green (and published by Kevin Drum) demonstrates it.

"For all the years he was president," Armey told me, "Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we'd do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn't like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president's autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it."

Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. "Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, 'It would probably wind up on eBay,'" Armey continued. "Do I give a damn? No. But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult? It's stupid. From the point of view of your own self-interest, it's stupid. I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader. If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with? The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office."

Not only were Bush and Rove not interested in obtaining information from outside the White House as Frum pointed out above, they did not even practice the the normal civilities that ease working together with people they disagree with, and if they treated the conservative Republican Speaker of the House that way, they disagreed with everyone.

For the conservatives who decry the "Bush haters," they need to remember that a person gets back the same behavior he demonstrates towards others. There is nothing in the Constitution that even hints that the President should be treated with a level of respect and civility he fails to demonstrate to others.

Let's not forget that Rove put Bush into the office he now holds, and Rove has also set the standards for how to treat those with whom he disagrees. Bush is responsible for this, the most disastrous Presidency in America's history, but Rove is right up there in line for blame with Bush himself.

Karl Rove - direct link from Watergate to Shrub.

More about Karl Rove. Rick Perlstein describes Rove's early political history during the Nixon administration. He also relays rumors that Rove may be slated to become Fred Thompson's campaign manager in Thompson's Presidential run. Go read it. It's short.

Then consider this story from Kevin Drum.

Josh Green's fortuitously timed Karl Rove profile in this month's Atlantic contains this mysterious anecdote:

Hurricane Katrina clearly changed the public perception of Bush's presidency. Less examined is the role Rove played in the defining moment of the administration's response: when Air Force One flew over Louisiana and Bush gazed down from on high at the wreckage without ordering his plane down. Bush advisers Matthew Dowd and Dan Bartlett wanted the president on the ground immediately, one Bush official told me, but were overruled by Rove for reasons that are still unclear: "Karl did not want the plane to land in Louisiana." Rove's political acumen seemed to be deserting him altogether.

I suspect the answer here is that Rove never truly had a lot of political acumen. He had campaign acumen. He was good at winning elections, but not at much else.
[Emphasis mine - Editor WTF-o]

I'd really agree with that last line. "...good at winning elections, but not at much else." Someone in the Republican Party needs that kind of expertise right now, and rattlesnakes don't retire. They just move from one hole to another looking for more comfort and better prey. Rove is leaving one hole, and he will be searching for another.

Rove working for a Republican candidate for President would certainly explain the timing of his departure from the White House. Besides the fact that it is clearly on his own terms (his ego demands that) it would be difficult for him to work on Thompson's campaign from the White House, and Fred needs him now. Fred has already gone through one campaign manager and the replacements are described as "temporary." The Republican caucuses and primaries start in January 2008, so Fred has only about four months to announce and become a serious candidate.

Considering the lackluster performance of all of the currently announced candidates ("None of the Above" is still leading) Thompson has an excellent opportunity to win the nomination if he gets a well-managed campaign.

Rove could not run such a campaign from the White House, and time is short. So Rove needs to act soon if he is going to. Nixon is known to have said that Thompson is "Not very smart, but friendly." That makes him Rove's type of candidate.

Since Thompson is scheduled to announce his candidacy in September, we should know soon.

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For an interesting set of views go see Digby. She has assembled some of the less hagiographic and more accurate reports on Republican saint Rove that have been recently published. Andrew Sullivan is particularly scathing.

Karl Rove resigning

Well, well. Karl Rove has decided to leave the White House. Might as well. He has done all the damage he can do to America. MSNBC has the story, but it really is little more than saying that he wants to go home and spend more time with his family.

I'm sure that will be a lot of hagiography written about the Republican 'Saint' who created George W. Bush as as a politician, and one who changed the way America has been governed. He changed the idea from one of American politicians working together for the betterment of America in spite of different philosophies to one in which the Republican Party gained dominance to one in which Republicans gained control of the government, passed their most extreme possible legislation by votes that often came down to 50% plus one vote, then used every possible tool of government to sway elections and maintain their small majority. When laws like the Hatch Act got in their way, Rove simply ignored the law and used control of the Department of Justice to avoid prosecution.

I think it is clear that Rove has changed both the Republican Party and the American governmental system, very much for the worse. His focus has been on gaining and using power and trampling on the Constitution when it got in the way of his power grabs.

Crooks and Liars presents the NBC TV announcement of Rove's resignation without analysis or significant comment.

BBC News presents a reasonably straightforward news story that tries to pull together what Rove has meant to this White House.

Simon Rosenberg offers this epitaph:

Karl Rove was the "architect" of one of the worst governments in American history, and the one who engineered the end of modern conservatism, one of the most successful ideological movements of recent times.

Brilliant yes. Bold, without a doubt. A complete and utter failure who left his country and his movement weaker than he found it? Yep.

Eventually, perhaps, disgraced.

Kevin Drum offers this view:

Instant analysis: It doesn't really matter. History will judge Rove a colossal failure, a man who never understood how to govern and, for all his immense knowledge of polls and politics, never really understood the times he lived in. It was 9/11 that both made and broke the Bush presidency, not some kind of mystical McKinley-esque realignment. Rove was blind to that, and blind to the way Bush should have governed after 9/11. His one-track mind, in which every problem is solved by wielding the biggest, nastiest partisan club you can lift, just couldn't adapt. It's fitting that he insisted on making even his final act as calculatedly partisan as he could, announcing his resignation not through the White House press office, but in an interview with the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Sic transit, Karl.

Jeralyn of TalkLeft wrote a blog on Jul 16, 2005 riffing off Frank Rich at the New York Times. Her blog focused on Rich's take on the timing of Rove's even then anticipated resignation, pointing to what Rich wrote in the Sunday, July 17th (now behind NYTimes subscription curtain) edition of the Times:

Frank Rich has a column in Sunday's New York Times in which he writes that Iraq, not the Wilsons, is the real issue in RoveGate. And,

Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

While I tend to follow the subpoenas in analyzing the story, Rich advises you to follow the uranium.

It seems to me that all of 2007 has been a lead-up to September when Gen Petraeus will report on the results of his "Surge." Right now, August, is dead time politically. It is the month of the summer vacations (Bush in Crawford, the Iraqi Parliament in Jordan, and the Germans on the beaches in Spain and Italy) and also the lull before the anticipated political storm of September.

In my opinion, Iraq has been more Cheney's ballgame than Rove's, although Rove has used the Iraq War politically in Domestic U.S. politics masterfully. But time is getting short for Rove's greatest creation, the Bush Presidency. Rove may feel he has nothing left to prove. August 31st could be a really good time for him to get out before the bad news from Iraq breaks and he can't leave without looking like the Democrats ran him out.

This entire Presidency has been about the collective overinflated egos of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove. Why should that change now?

Kevin at LeanLeft asks some interesting questions about the timing of Roves resignation:

Did major GOP players look at the disaster that was 2006 and the albatross that Rove has made of Bush and decided that they couldn’t afford any more of his genius? Or have one of the many, many scandals he had his finger in finally started to catch up to him? Remember, one of his closest aides is deeply involved in the Abramoff scandal and he has been implicated in the US Attorney scandals and his office was giving apparently illegal political briefing to civil servants.

And now that Rove is gone, does this mean that Cheney has even more influence on Bush?

Then there is EmptyWheel over at "The Next Hurrah." She offers a whole series of possible reasons (after dismissing the platitude "More time with the family" garbage for what it is.) The list includes:

• Republicans Think He's a Loser for (among other thngs):
  
  
  • Social Security
  
  
  • Faith-based wingnut welfare
  
  
  • Katrina
  
  
  • The 2006 elections
    and
  
  
  • Rove's effort to court Latino voters vs Republican nativism.


• The Abramoff Investigation


• The OSC Investigation


• The Iglesias Investigation

As always, EmptyWheel's article is worth reading, especially if all the Republican traecley efforts to rewrite history leave an over-sweet taste in the back of your mouth. Rove's history is more of a dark and bitter thing that what we will read on Paul Gigot's Wall Street Journal editorial page.

We live in interesting times, and interesting times makes for good stories. Rove's sudden resignation is just another small chapter in the on-going story story of the Bush attempt at despotism. Where does this story go next?

Impeach Bush, Cheney; that will Elect Giuliani President

Is it possible that Bush and Rove are intentionally committing "High crimes and Misdemeanors" in order to bait the Democrats into impeaching Bush and Cheney? Here's why the Bush people would do that.

Not only is the Bush Presidency the Presidency of a criminal organization, it consists of failed criminals. When Bush leaves office in January 2009 he will leave behind an eight year Presidency that lacks any single significant success at all. Bush's signature action is not going to be his effort to track down the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. It is going to be his too-smart-by-half misdirection in which he tried to overreach and totally reform the Middle East into his vision (and that of the free market oil-besotted Republicans) by attacking Iraq, the weakest Middle Eastern country he could attack. Iraq was the one major oil supplying Middle Eastern country Bush's father had already proven the American military could easily defeat. The result, through what Rumsfeld called "Shock and Awe," was suppose to be a new Middle East consisting of a set of peaceful modernized market-based Middle Eastern states ready to sell oil to the U.S. and recycle the resulting petrodollars by buying American consumer goods and services, all while leaving Israel alone.

Bush's God-given genius was going to create a miracle in the Middle East, and no one else had even thought to try it. The September 11 attacks opened the opportunity.

The many levels of stupidity built into the preemptive attack on Iraq will be studied for decades. Now sometimes even a stupid move can be carried out so that the end results look at least acceptable. Because of Bush's complete lack of any semblance of leadership skills and his inability to select and use competent subordinates that has not been a possible outcome of the abysmally stupid invasion and botched occupation of Iraq.

The American public is sick of Iraq, and Bush refuses to face reality and get us out of there. In so doing, he is destroying the Republican Party as a national party for at least a generation. (The really good part is that Bush has discredited the conservative movement so badly that it can only be replaced. It will never recover.)

Is there anything that could possibly reverse the unparalleled disaster that the Bush administration has perpetuated on America and on the Republican Party? Something that could be done now so that the Republicans could - somehow - retain at least the White House in 2008? Yes, there is, but it is nothing the Republicans can do themselves. They have to get the Democrats to do it for them.

To win or, more realistically, even limit the severity of the Republican losses in the 2008 elections the Republicans have to force the Democrats to impeach Bush.

God only knows that America has never had a President who deserved impeachment more. Even the two other Republican Presidents who well deserved impeachment (Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon) did not deserve impeachment as much as Bush does. Justice demands, even screams, that Bush and Cheney must be removed in disgrace immediately. Justice literally screams for impeachment!

But look at the argument Michael Tomasky of the Washington Post made yesterday regarding the political effects of impeaching Bush and Cheney.

Impeachment is not merely a bad idea, but the single worst course of action that Democrats could possibly undertake -- the only thing they could do that might, in one stroke, convert Bush from the figure of contempt and mockery he is now into one of vague sympathy. Just as bad, it's the one move that would definitively alienate nonideological voters and, therefore, harm the Democrats' otherwise excellent chances for winning congressional seats and the White House in 2008. And that's just what impeachment would do to the Democrats. Even worse is what it would do to liberalism and to the country.

You don't have to be as expert a nose counter as Lyndon B. Johnson to know that impeachment wouldn't succeed. You'd have to get both Bush and Cheney to make any difference, which makes it a heavier lift. Even if the articles of impeachment somehow got through the House -- a stretch, because 61 Democrats represent nominally "red" districts and thus may feel compelled to vote nay -- conviction would require 67 votes in the Senate. That means at least 18 Republicans would have to vote to remove a Republican president and vice president. (I'm assuming that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent, would vote no.) Of course, new bombshells could change all that. But for now, impeachment advocates are urging Democrats to start a fight they'd lose.

[Snip]

Republicans would be far more adept at turning a failed impeachment effort to their advantage in 2008 than the Democrats were in 2000. Back then, Al Gore, his handlers and Democrats in general sought to run from Clinton and push the conversation back to that bland terrain to which defensive Democrats always scamper: "the issues." Republicans, who aren't usually defensive and don't generally scamper, would make impeachment the issue, and by Election Day 2008, the GOP would have millions of Americans believing that -- get this -- the really merciless partisans of the Bush era were the Democrats.

One of the Democrats' strongest arguments for 2008, regardless of their nominee, will be that it's time for the country to set aside rampant partisanship and ideologically driven government. Impeachment would take away that argument.
[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF-o]

Let me briefly summarize the clear outcome of any effort to impeach Bush - Cheney.

1. The impeachment effort will fail. Senate conviction is impossible.
2. Any impeachment effort will shut down the Congress for all other actions. The Republicans don't even have to be obstructive to create the "do-nothing Congress" issue.
3. An attempt to impeach Bush Cheney is the only action that could possible make the Republican Party competitive in the 2008 election by shifting the onus of "Partisanship above the countries' business" onto the Democrats - and it would.

Karl Roves signature strategy for winning difficult elections has always been to convert the opponent's strength into a weakness and to convert his candidate's weakness into a strength.

Bush is so far down in the polls that he has no political strengths of any significance, and he has led the entire Republican Party into the same ditch he is in himself. That is the major weakness of both Bush and the republicans generally - only slightly ahead of the abysmal choice of candidates they have attempted to field to run for President, but that is another issue. How might Karl Rove apply his signature election strategy to the rapidly approaching 2008 election?

He might have Bush make a series of very provocative acts which are clearly high crimes and misdemeanors, tied into alleged efforts to fight the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism.) The effort would not be to create an impregnable Unitary Executive Presidency, since a Democratic President and Congress can reverse those actions starting in 18 months. The intent would be to bait the Democratic Party into attempting to impeach Bush and Cheney.

Mix a Democratic effort to impeach Bush and Cheney with the still very powerful and dangerous Republican propaganda machine and Rove would convert Bush's biggest weaknesses into strengths while converting the Democratic strengths going into the election into weaknesses.

Do you think that Bush and Rove would risk destroying America simply to ensure a Republican election victory (or reduce what is shaping up into a party-destroying loss) in 2008?

Sure they would. Wearing pleased smirks on their faces all the way.

Democrats need to resist the bait. Much as I hate deferring gratification, impeachment must remain off the table.

Office of Special Counsel investigating politization of Federal Civl Service

The U.S. Attorney purge was just the very tip of the program to totally politicize the federal government, using it to raise money and get Republicans elected everywhere. Once locked up, the machine that Rove was building would have left America as a one-party state in which elections mean nothing more than did the elections in the USSR or in Saddam's Iraq. Think Progress reports on the investigation now being conducted by the Office of Special Counsel into the politicization of the Federal Government.

Politicization of the federal government has been illegal for decades. The 1939 Hatch Act specifically prohibits partisan campaign or electoral activities on federal government property, including federal agencies. But in 2005, Ken Mehlman, formerly one of Bush’s top political advisers, outlined the White House’s strategy of utilizing government resources for partisan gain:

One of the things that can happen in Washington when you work in an agency is that you forget who sent you there. And it’s important to remind people that you’re George Bush people. … If there’s one empire I want built, it’s the George Bush empire. [One Party Country, p. 102]

With that imperial partisanship in mind, the Bush White House has engaged in an unprecedented quest to politicize the federal government, giving briefings and PowerPoint presentations everywhere from the Interior Department to NASA on how to secure Republican victories. Said one Interior Department manager, “We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results” (One Party Country, p. 103). Bush loyalists in federal agencies have also helped generate millions for favored political candidates.

This was - and is - a coup-de-etate conducted by the American right-wing extremist conservatives, both economic and religious. It is beginning to be exposed, but the exposure is mostly surface so far.

The plot thickens....

More emails dumped on the Department of Justice scandal. This time they have Sara Taylor, one of Karl Rove's top aides, strategizing on how to get back at the Republicans who spoke homnestly to the Senators in the Senate Hearings on the U.S. Attorney purge.

These emails come from the RNC accounts used by top White House personnel to avoid leaving records that could be used against them. Guess that didn't work so well, did it?

It appears that Ms. Taylor was unhappy that many of the Republican witnesses at the Hearings were unwilling to pull a "Scooter" Libby and lie, committing Obstruction of Justice.

---

This is interesting. EmptyWheel discusses WHY these documents were dumped at this time.

Rove nearly locked up US for Repubs - until the Iraq War interfered in Nov. 2006

Digby describes how Karl Rove was building a national political machine that would permanently give control of America to the conservative extremists. It involved depowering the Democrats completely, running a one-party government, fixing most close elections so that the Republicans stole them, using the Department of Justice to fix court case outcomes in cases of election fraud when Republicans got caught while at the same time bringing indictments against strong Democratic politicians just before elections, and using the power of the government to control what the press reported about government and elections.

It nearly worked, but the lack of success in the war in Iraq sidetracked the 2006 election. Since then the Congressional Hearings have begun to surface how crooked the Republicans have been. Still, most of Rove's crooked politics is still in place.

This article by Digby is especially worth reading.

Fitz' sentencing memo establishes Libby's culpibility clearly

"Scooter" Libby's defenders have been wailing and ranting for months that the trial and conviction of Libby was criminalizing politics and that he did nothing wrong. Well, the declassified document that Fitzgerald just released demolishes every single talking point the right-wingers have been spewing. This report has been in several places, but the best is on Mark Kleiman's site The Reality-Based Community. Mark does a masterful job of extracting the key points from Fitz' memo.

Valerie Wilson was an active and covert agent of the CIA during the legally relevant period, as every judge who passed judgement on the case early on had to know from classified information. Libby was orchestrating a cover-up of the illegal release of Wilson's identity and Libby kept Cheney fully informed of his activities. Specifically because of Scooter Libby's lies to the FBI and the the Grand Jury it became impossible to prove, legally, that the individuals who actually revealed Wilson's identity had the requisite state of mind (knowledge and intent) that was required to prove a violation of the law. So Scooter's cover-up successfully prevented prosecution of the specific (treasonous) criminals.

Then Fitz takes on the many accusations that Scooter should never has been tried in the first place, let alone convicted.

7. In summary:

To accept the argument that Mr. Libby’s prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President. To state this claim is to refute it. Peremptorily closing this investigation in the face of the information available at its early stages would have been a dereliction of duty, and would have afforded Mr. Libby and others preferential treatment not accorded to ordinary persons implicated in criminal investigations. [pp. 13-14]

This trial exposes at least three people who without any level of doubt at all have committed treason to the nation. Those people are I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his boss, Richard Cheney, and the innately rotten Karl Rove.

Remember that treason is the only crime that is defined in the U.S. Constitution. It is defined as

Article 3 - The Judicial Branch
Section 3 - Treason

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. Art 3, Section 3, U.S. Constitution.

Those three individuals clearly meet the definition of the crime of treason.

I'd also say that anyone attempting to protect them does likewise. Jonas Goldberg from National Review On-line, anyone? Perhaps there should be a list kept on-line of those who are traitors. It could certainly start with Libby, Rove, Cheney and Goldberg.

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Here is the Fitzgerald sentencing memo (in .pdf format.)

What is happening with the investigation into firing of Carol Lam, USA San Diego?

Josh Marshall explains the real problems with the firing of Carol lam, the U.S. Attorney in San Diego, CA while she was investigating a corruption case related to the Abramoff case that includes a Congressman, the House Appropriations Committee, high level CIA officers and high level civilians in the Department of Defense.



Josh explains why the firing was at the direction of President Bush.

Goodling to testify - immunity approved

Monica Goodling has received the immunity her attorneys were requesting before she would testify before Congress about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.

Congress agreed to the deal, Justice Department investigators reluctantly agreed not to not oppose it and U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan gave it final approval Friday.

"Monica Goodling may not refuse to testify," Hogan began his brief order, which said that Goodling could not be prosecuted for anything other than perjury in connection with her testimony.

Lawmakers want to question Goodling as part of an inquiry into whether the Justice Department played politics with the hiring and firing of department officials.

Goodling, as liaison between the White House and the Department of Justice, is in a unique position to know whether Rove was involved in the firings and if so, to what extent.

This should be interesting.

DoJ and White House withholding letters and emails

Murray Weiss reports that Kyle Sampson drafted and sent letters to the Senate that left out Karl Rove's part in replacing Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummings with his aide and protege, Timothy Griffin.

"But an earlier e-mail from Sampson to Oprison" [an associate White House counsel] "that has already been made public indicates that the two men discussed Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers as being at the forefront of Griffin's nomination."

There are also other emails and documents that the White House is withholding from Congress.

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role.

"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration." [editor - highlighting is mine.]

The item highlighted above is confirmation of my earlier assertion that Al Gonzales has been playing a role. He knows everything that has happened and why, and his statements to the contrary are the equivalent of the small child standing next to the broken cookie jar looking up and saying "What? I don't know how that happened." Gonzales is playing his role to protect the White House.

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Some of my prior discussions of Alberto Gonzales' testimony can be found here, here and here.

Prior reports by Murray Waas reported in the National Journal can be found here.