http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/brecherCongress Stirs to Rein in the President
by JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH
February 9, 2006
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Foiling Rove's Strategy
At the January meeting of the Republican National Committee, Karl Rove explicitly laid out a strategy to win the 2006 election by stigmatizing the Democratic Party as weak on national security. Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have followed Rove's script in their aggressive defense of warrantless NSA spying.
Nothing would make Rove happier than to have warrantless spying and other abuses of presidential authority treated as a partisan issue of Democrats against Republicans. But they aren't. As Al Gore recently observed, "Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program." Specter told the Washington Post, "I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."
One key to foiling Rove strategy is to treat government lawlessness as a nonpartisan concern. The combination of bipartisan complicity and bipartisan concern opens a new opportunity to split support for Bush's criminal activities and to build a coalition to terminate them.
This is possible because Rove's script isn't playing so well even in the Republican Party. Insight magazine quoted Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as saying, "I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context." Before the Gonzales hearing Specter said that the spy program of his own party's President is in flat violation of the law. In a post-hearing interview with the Washington Post, Specter said of Gonzales, "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser!".......