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http://www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/A_Perfect_Perfect_Storm.htmlTrue, the guy does have a few assets to bank on. One of the best is Cheney. Unless he goes down first or simultaneously, the worst that will happen to Bush is that they’ll lock him in the White House mess for two years and hand the keys to the country over to James Baker. Anything to keep Cheney from having his finger on the trigger. But since we seem to be condemned here to repeating history, Cheney and his Halliburton connections may come to make Agnew look like a Vestal virgin by comparison, once the dirt is out. (Watching Dick go down would be entertaining enough in its own right, but then seeing prostitute-in-chief John McCain scramble to convince a very foul-mooded The Decider to tap him as the next Jerry Ford would be truly priceless.) Hey, there’s a trio to draw to – Bush, Cheney and McCain. In any case, you can probably scratch that ‘asset’. Heck, these days the House might just impeach Cheney on account of his snarl.
Bush also has at least 2/9 of a Supreme Court to depend on, and possibly 4/9. Scalia and Thomas are ideologically hopeless anyway, but they are also joined at the hip to the Frankenstein they created in Bush vs. Gore, so there’s two sure votes. Roberts and especially Alito would love to join them in protecting the president from subpoenas and investigations, and of course they owe him for their appointments, though it is possible that they may nevertheless decide to jettison this stinker, choosing to look out just for themselves like the good little Republicans they are. My guess is that Kennedy, in the middle and smarting badly from not getting elevated to Chief after knowingly making a fool of himself to deliver the White House for Bush in 2000, would happily join the other four to his left in putting the little creep in the dock. So scratch that one, too. Payback’s a bitch, eh?
... the only real objective of the White House at this point can be to prolong the status quo until Bush gets out of office, so that at least one person on the planet can be convinced that when the next president pulls the troops out that it was this retreat that caused the war to be lost...Whatever happens, though, Iraq will form the corrosive backdrop to the series of developments that will drag this presidency down. I’ve always believed that Bill Clinton would have been unceremoniously dumped into the Potomac during his impeachment trial if it had happened during the time of a recession. Lucky for him he was presiding over a boom economy instead. Similarly, an otherwise popular Ronald Reagan survived Iran-Contra, when he might not have against a more daunting backdrop... The middle class has been just sort of hanging in there for the last six years, keeping their noses slightly above water, maxing out their credit cards while prices rise and incomes stagnate, all while having to listen to the president complain about their lack of gratitude for the great economy he’s given them. God help Bush (or not) if there should be a recession in 2007, which many economists are predicting. You wanna see surly?
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congress will launch a series of investigations into a White House which has completely avoided scrutiny and oversight for six years. My guess is that the corruption, incompetence and plain unconstitutional as well as garden variety illegalities in this White House are continent-wide and ocean-deep. And it starts with war-profiteering, which – in the context of kids dying daily for this Vietnam-dodger’s war sold on lies – will make surly look like a Brownies bake sale. Bush might find himself lucky to avoid Ceaucesceu’s (and Saddam’s) fate......Which brings us to the beauty of the Constitution and the wisdom of the Founders. Bush need not even have broken any laws to be impeached, convicted and removed from office. We happen to know for sure that he broke at least one major one, because he admitted violating the FISA law in order to authorize illegal wiretaps. But even without that slam dunk, an impeachable offense is literally whatever a majority of the House of Representatives says it is (thanks to the late Gerry Ford for that quite correct formulation), even if that happens to be nothing other than the crime of being dumb. And a subsequent conviction requires only that two-thirds of the Senate agree to whatever charges are presented by the House. Then it’s out the door you go...But, of course, the Republicans in the Senate would protect this guy, such that you’d never get near to the 67 votes needed to oust him. Or would they? Here’s where it gets really interesting. They may be mean, and they may be policy-dumb, but GOP politicians (just like any others, only more so) are all about survival and career, and they’ve figured out that George W. Bush is about as healthy to either of those as the bubonic plague, and equally contagious. Already, the opportunistic weasel who daily impersonates Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman has broken from Bush on the war. Maybe he’ll even change his party affiliation a second time, going back to being a Democrat again (“Hmmm. I see the wind is blowing to left today.”) Heck, maybe he’ll even grow out his ponytail once more and lead demonstrations against another stupid American war of horrific destruction! Whether or not we get lucky enough to see that bit of entertainment, be assured that these GOP cats know what sunk their ship in 2006, and the ones lucky enough to have survived that electoral meltdown (many, in the Senate, only because they weren’t on the ballot last year) won’t be waiting around for a repeat performance on steroids in 2008. Till now, it has been implausible for them to jump ship after so tightly tying themselves to the previously popular president. This will still be true in 2008, but that devil will nevertheless represent a better shot at survival than the deep blue sea of continuing to stick with Bush. Those gale-force winds knocking you over in 2007 and 2008 will be the slipstream chasing Republicans speeding by at about Mach 5, running as far away from Bush as they can, as fast as they can.
Which means – especially if there is a whiff or two of Halliburton war-profiteering in the headlines – that what we’ll see in the coming year is a massive Republican cutting of bait, perhaps taking the form of participating in the tossing out of their own homies, Dick and Junior, even if that means anointing the evil San Francisco liberal (and therefore closet lesbian and child molester) Nancy Pelosi as president. (Sorry Hillary!). W is the ultimate Republican ball-and-chain, and if you throw these guys in the water, they’ll chew off their own legs rather than drown. Bush spent six years pissing all over Congress, anyhow, so they can get themselves all worked up into a royal lather if they want, whooping and hollering about the danger of imperial presidencies and the “outrageous” scandals they “had no idea about”, in order to cover their hasty retreat...The GOP train-wreck of 2006 is going to become the GOP Chernobyl of 2008, to the point where the party may become so discredited that its very survival is jeopardized. It is seriously possible that the one-man wrecking machine known as George W. Bush may be able to add the Republican Party to the extensive laundry list of destruction he’s already compiled, which presently includes Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, the Constitution, and nearly a million lives, along with America’s reputation, finances and national security. Even if you happen to love your country, you gotta admit that’s an impressive list, ain’t it? I mean, how many people do you know who could single-handedly destroy so much so fast, including whole cities? Jesus Christ, the guy’s like a human MIRV...For the rest of our lives and beyond, ‘Bush’ will become a one word appellation for stupidity, arrogance, predation, radicalism and national suicide, just as ‘Benedict Arnold’ comes down to us today, even after two centuries, as a euphemism for treason.
The only people who will be happy that we had this clown in office for eight years will be Dan Quayle, who has finally managed to shirk the title of Biggest Joke in American Politics, Bill Clinton, whose presidency has now come to look grandly accomplished by comparison, and Hillary Clinton, who likely will be sworn-in (ugh) on that January day, having utterly pulverized the pathetic sacrificial lamb of a Republican nominee in the previous November’s election, a landslide that all but sends the Grand Old Party to America’s political party burial ground, there to join the Federalists and the Whigs in its rightful resting place.
Good riddance, American Caligula.
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