Doin’ the Karl Rove Dance-A Chorus Line of “Loyal Bushies”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/04/302/

Doin’ the Karl Rove Dance
A Chorus Line of “Loyal Bushies”
by Elizabeth de la Vega

Last week, Americans with access to YouTube were subjected to a once-in-a-lifetime performance by President Bush’s senior political adviser Karl Rove. At least, I fervently hope that this event will only happen once in our lifetimes. Watching Rove, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bobbing and weaving awkwardly in a pathetic parody of a rapper was painful. However, more excruciating than his routine — “MC Rove: Doin’ the Dance, the Karl Rove Dance” to lyrics supplied by comedian Brad Sherwood — was the sight of the members of our so-called independent Washington press corps laughing amiably at the antics of a senior presidential aide whose conduct is so universally considered despicable that no one even flinches at ill-timed lines like: “Don’t get the jitters/but MC Rove tears the head off of critters.” That scene was the stuff of nightmares.

Rove’s rap performance was disturbing, yes; but, in the end, it was also relatively brief and harmless. The same cannot be said of the danse macabre he has been directing since the Bush administration took over the White House. We know that Rove is a master of the quick-step and the hustle, but he almost never makes his moves in public. Instead, he has been directing the Bush production from the Office of Political Affairs whose purpose is, according to the White House website, to ensure “that the executive branch and the President are aware of the concerns of the American citizen.”

Karl Rove has, for years, been choreographing an elaborate dance of death for the federal government designed to give life to the Republican Party, and yet the public remains largely ignorant of his activities because he so rarely takes the stage. That honor is reserved for an apparently infinite supply of young Republicans eager to dance their little hearts out for a chance to get plum appointments. In other words, the prerequisite for the success of the Bush administration’s extravaganza — whether in Washington, Iraq, or elsewhere — has been a chorus line of “loyal Bushies.”

Of course, the term “loyal Bushie” requires no definition, but one has recently been supplied by Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s former deputy chief of staff. Undoubtedly to his everlasting regret, Sampson, who resigned just prior to his testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, used this term to describe those United States Attorneys who should be retained by the White House because they had “managed well and exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general.” Those who “chafed against administration initiatives” were recommended for removal, according to Sampson; while the rest of the lot, including U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, were unranked.

I spent last Thursday watching Sampson testify about the White House choreographed firings of seven U.S. Attorneys who were chafers. I was compelled to watch, even though, having worked for more than 21 years as an Assistant United States Attorney myself, I considered the revelation of this latest outrage to be the least horrific of a long string of horrors carried out by the Bush administration in the name of the Department of Justice for the advancement of the Republican Party.

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