Going back to Texas...the Bushies are heading home. [View All]

[madfloridian]

They came from Texas almost en masse. They took over DC, got their pawprints all over our government and our country...and soon they will probably be transporting themselves back to that state.

The ones like Tom DeLay and for the ones like Karl Rove...well, they will always be with us publicly, I fear. For the Bush Republicans there is no shame in being indicted or being held in contempt by a congressional committee. It just does not matter to them.

From the Texas Observer:

Last Train to Texas

Nearly eight years ago, President-elect George W. Bush led an exodus of Texans to help fill out the ranks of his administration in Washington. There was Bush’s so-called “iron triangle” of advisers: Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, and Joe Allbaugh, known for their tight control over the presidential campaign; longtime friends and associates like Don Evans and Margaret Spellings; and a cadre of other loyalists, of whom Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, Dan Bartlett, and Scott McClellan are a few of the most famous (or in some cases, infamous).

As the Bush administration enters its final days, more and more of the original Texas troops have been popping up back in the Lone Star State. While they haven’t been met with jeers and rotten vegetables, no one’s been rolling out the red carpet, either.

Sounds like they may not be welcomed back warmly.

But now is not a happy time for Republicans on the national scene. Democrats appear likely to expand their majorities in Congress and perhaps win back the presidency, effectively sending thousands of Republicans into the ranks of the unemployed. In years past, think tanks and lobbying firms have served as safe havens for those exiled from power, but even those jobs are scarce these days—thanks, in part, to former Texas Congressman and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Following the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, DeLay instituted his “K Street Project,” which cut off access in the halls of Congress to lobbying firms unless they donated to conservative causes and hired Republicans to top jobs. The move led to a great purge of Democrats from the lobbying ranks. That served Republicans well in the short run. But like other elements of DeLay’s grand “permanent Republican majority” plan, this one has come back to haunt his party. In the past two years, many firms have scrambled to improve their Democratic bona fides, and adding former Republican staffers to the payroll is the last thing on their minds.

This is a long article, and this statement by Wayne Slater, author of "Bush's Brain" actually does not bode that well for Texas either.

The problem for Bush refugees is that the person holding the levers of power in Texas is Gov. Rick Perry—and Perry and Bush have had a rocky relationship dating back to Bush’s time as governor. The friction began when Rove was plotting Bush’s 1998 re-election campaign to expand his bipartisan appeal as a prelude to a presidential bid, making moves that often came at the expense of Perry, who was in a tight race for lieutenant governor.

“Perry is now Texas Republican politics,” said Wayne Slater, a Dallas Morning News reporter and author of two books on Karl Rove. “He has dominated the landscape of Texas politics for almost a decade. And the Perry people who really own a large part of the Republican infrastructure in Texas are not on particularly good terms with many of the Bush folks, and they will not get the favorable treatment you might expect in Texas.”

Read it all.

This part interested me. Guess who might be in charge of Bush's library?

"Rove is said to be leading the charge on planning the content of the library and its efforts to burnish the Bush legacy, going so far as to meet with administrators of other research libraries for ideas. Don Evans is spearheading fundraising for the project, and Hughes and Bartlett are involved."

They have all contributed to harming our country. Some Bush cronies even got involved with Florida's school system...pushing the extreme testing that is being done. Their efforts in Florida and Texas have been interchangeable indeed.

But they will always be with us because they are not held to the shame others are...they just keep coming back on the scene like DeLay and Rove.