We know what the stakes are for this adminstration if they lose even one house of Congress this fall; Accountability.
This election will either make or break this presidency. The Repubicans know it and we better know it. If they fail to retain their control of Congress, Bush is a lame duck president with nothing to look forward to but investigations for his final 2 years in office. Like a cornered wild animal, we are about to realize that as far as Republican dirty politics goes, we ain't seen nothing yet.
Therefore Republicans have every reason to take their political game plan that, at this point, we are quite familiar with, even further. And if it is not anticipated, and countered NOW before it gets going, then it threatens Democratic chances in the fall as well as threatens the very core of democracy.
The Republican tried and true game plan is called "By Any Means Necessary"
Check out E.J. Dionne's Op-Ed in the Washington Post today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
It is the latest in a string of events that I believe should sound alarm bells for every Democrat and speaks volumes to what John Dean points to in his article on findlaw.com, the "October Surprise":
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...
Is it any coincidence that during the rearrangement of the deck chairs that Rove was "demoted" to strictly focusing on the mid-term elections? We all know what his strengths are, as grotesque as they may be (I am fully aware that I am not providing new information to anyone).
With the knowledge that Rove's political mantra has always been "be on the offensive" as religiously as "stay on-message", it should not take much to divine what his strategy will be.
Rove recently gave a speech attacking the American election process as dangerously inept and easily corruptible. He should know. Unless you are a kool-aid drinker you know who has had the lack of conscience to actually manipulate, cheat, lie and steal their way to election "wins". And with the history of successfully re-framing policy and politics by naming issues with contradictory language(Healthy Forests, Clean Skies, Reformer with Results, the list goes on), it should be clear that one line of attack this summer and fall will be the DEMOCRATIC manipulation of the election process. And while our leaders are busy explaining how they are not responsible, Rove will have yet again successfully moved the hot spotlight off of Republicans and onto us.
Coupled with the hyping and reiteration of the "strong desire of disgruntled Far-left wing Democrats wanting to win in the fall solely to (gasp!)impeach a president in a time of war" will play on national FOX networks (which we will all be able to see), but more importantly, FOX local affilate stations, Sinclair Media local stations and local newspapers (which only small specific audiences who think they are getting their local trustworthy news most of us will not be able to see) as well as the creatively vaccuous palette of hate radio.
Think about fact that the nuclear option is "on the table" with regards to Iran. Is that simply a policy position? No, it's a domestic political position attempting to call out the pussy Democrats who are too chicken to say the "N" word when it comes to the protection of our country. All of the Joint Chiefs are against this option, it has been solely the civilian leadership insisting as well as the psychotic congressional Republicans chanting it like a church hymn. Can you imagne if six generals came out against a Democratic Sec of Defense? Not only would the Republicans be calling for his removal but for charges of treason.
Georgia10 recently posted a front page diary about the blatant lying that took place in the Spanish-language radio ads regarding immigration reform. This is simply the beginning- a taste of the outright lying that will saturate the airwaves for the next six months because the stakes are that high. Being angry and incredulous will not be enough.
John Dean calls them in his book "Conservatives Without Conscience". This is not just a catchy title; this is truly the case. We must remember "By Any Mean Necessary", means exactly what it says.
Republicans don't mind breaking the law, trampling the Constitution, toturing prisoners, suspending habeus corpus, tapping our phones, going to war under false pretenses or even sitting with fingers crossed at the chance to have an October Surprise be another terrorist event to exploit because they so believe that theirs is the only way, they so believe that they are right, that they MUST break our laws and destroy our principles to win elections because they feel that they are the only ones to be trusted with the direction of this nation. Because, in their warped minds, once they have total control of our nation, they will easily return all of those principles to their rightful American place: As high ideals to aspire to. They will sleep peacefully at night because in their minds democracy wasn't destroyed, it was simply set aside for a time---for the good of the nation.
What I am saying is that they THINK they are patriots, They truly believe they are the TRUE American patriots. The difference between them and us being that they have the guts to break a few eggs to make an omlette whereas us lefty weaklings insist on going by the book. We are the mousey pencil-pushers in their own little twisted Bruce Willis movies, getting in the way of the macho leading men trying to save the world, get the girl and then (ironically)yell cut, collect their enormous paychecks and go home to their mansions.
With the specter of Iran looming on our national horizon, the next six months will truly be the call to save our democracy, if we have not lost it already. If our Democratic leaders falter this election cycle by not responding to attacks (as Kerry did), or by playing the statesman and being above the fray (as Gore did), or by our pundits not doing their homework before doing TV interviews and calling out Fox News, Chris Matthews et al on their bias, lies and spin WHILE ON THE SHOW and forcefully presenting our case, then I fear the worst for this nation more than at any other time.
We need fresh ideas, but more importantly, we need our leaders to heed them.
For starters, we need a broad media attack. Perhaps a series of commercials titled "Know your Conservative Voices", each commercial focusing on one pundit, (Limbuagh, Malkin, Hannity, Savage) or Republican Congresssman(Ney, Burns, Santorum, Delay, Cornyn)and throw every racist, intolerant, belligerent un-American quote back at them. 15 second spots with no other voice but their own to shock and nauseate every independent voter tired of the path we have been led on.
This is it. This is the same battle with the same players with the same strategy that we have fought and lost three times before. At this point, if we fail, we have no one to blame but ourselves.