"He (Bush) is a martyr, and someday all will see his glory." [View All]

[rodeodance]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/04/27/rove_bush/index_np.html
> The passion of George W. Bush
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> The president doesn't care that he is reviled. He is a martyr, and someday all will see his glory. Meanwhile, he's got Karl doing his dirty work.
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> By Sidney Blumenthal
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> April 27, 2006 | The urgent dispatch of Karl Rove to the business of maintaining one-party rule in the midterm elections is the Bush White House's belated startle reflex to its endangerment. Besieged by crises of his own making, plummeting to ever lower depths in the polls week after week, Bush has assigned his political general to muster dwindling forces for a heroic offensive to break out of the closing ring. If the Democrats gain control of the House or Senate they will launch a thousand subpoenas to establish the oversight that has been abdicated by the Republican Congress.
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> In his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in 2004, the "war president" spoke of "greatness" and "resolve" and repeatedly promised "a safer world" and "security," and compared himself "to a resolute president named Truman." Afterward, Bush declared he had had his "accountability moment"; further debate was unnecessary; the future was settled.
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> But Rove's elaborate design for Republican rule during the second term has collapsed under the strain of his grandiosity. In 2004, Rove galvanized "the base" (ironically, "al-Qaida" in Arabic) through ruthless divide-and-conquer and slash-and-burn tactics. But with Bush winning the election by a bare 50.73 percent, he failed to forge the unassailable Republican realignment that he sought.
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> Rove is an amateur historian whose goal was modeled on the apparently unlikely figure of President William McKinley. Bush's radicalism bears little resemblance to McKinley's stalwart conservatism except for his friendly orientation toward big business. Rove zeroed in on McKinley because his election in 1896 created a natural Republican presidential majority that was broken only by the party split of 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Progressive and when Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in a Democratic realignment in 1932. Rove and Bush had hoped to use the second term to force radical changes that would alter American government, society and politics. At last, they planned to undo the New Deal and return to the Republican Eden. But Rove's proposal for the privatization of Social Security, among other schemes, was aborted without even a single congressional hearing.
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