If you were Rove, what advice would you give Bush/Cheney at this point?

I know, I know, everyone will probably say something like, "Resign and hang yourselves from the same tree" or something along those lines. But I mean with this question, what possible advice could someone give Bush/Cheney to salvage their administration or at least bring their poll numbers up?

I think they should both find a deserted island ,pack their stuff and
get out of our country!!!! They have done more evil in the few years they have been in office than any adminstation in the last 100 years.
If they leave now maybe just maybe this country could be given back to the people and we could get everything back to normal.The sad part is we cant bring back all the people they have murdered with this phony war but it would keep anyone else from dying.
The only other solution is lock them up along with all their buddies and throw the key away.
Either one works for me.

fess up to change the subject:rofl:

My American Cousin is supposed to be great

:evilgrin:

Rove is probably telling them just to shut up for now and lie low. I hope he advises bush that the "frat boy" attitude is lame. There is nothing Rove will tell them that has any connection to honesty or decency, and so I really can't come up with what his devious mind will conceive.

Once polls sink to a certain level, they keep dropping of their own weight.

for my legal defense fund.

The 'terrorism' bit is the only prop that really works. So it's got to be played. But Al Qaeda can ruin its power quite easily.

For Bush to keep a Republican majority in Congress, he's going to have to play a lot issues almost perfectly in doing what grassroots Republicans want and expect. Roe. The AMT. Throwing DeLay overboard. (And Libby.)

In Iraq the Bush people have to do what they can to get Kissinger's famous "decent interval" between themselves and disaster.

Since this Administration is unable to do much of anything well, most of the effort is going to go into pinning Democrats down to the extent possible.

At the moment the chances of success of achieving all these things look about 50:50. Six months from now they'll feel 20:80 given standard Bush administration rates of failure. If Democrats play it as well as they have been able to at times, Republicans lose Congress period. If Democrats blunder as they usually have it may be possible to take another one away from them.

clots removed, Condi was buying shoes, and the blivet was dodging Cindy.
That was this summer, before their true shit hit the fan.
No advice here; they. are. doomed. and. rightly. so.

...them. Since I'm not Rove, I say impeach the creeps and ride them out of town on a rail - SOON!

right after you pardon my fat ass.

meaning Fitzgerald, the judge on the DeLay case, and any others who are now looking into Ney, Abramhoff, et al.

that asked the Iraqi people if they wanted the U.S. to remain. I would of course cheat but I could kill the arguement that the people don't want us there. It would tie up the debate for quite a while at least, maybe even past '06. It would also steal the show from the scandals for a bit and take a little pressure off.

I would then keep him floating around the country on a new Presidential campaign. I would have him rile the base and get rural. The issue would be irrelevant and ineffective but not controversial. Just keep him smiling and making them laugh. I'd have him stall and distract as much as possible but have some zingers ready for when the Democrats pull some more stunts. After the '06 election, he's home free as long as the voting machines aren't compromised (that is, the activists can't stop the fraud).

I would tell Bush/Cheney that the truth can no longer be hidden. Tell the American public that the war is about securing our energy suppy. Oil has likely already peaked and it's us or them. We either have to take draconian measures to reduce energy consumption *IMMEDIATELY* or we have to (to quote a freeper sign I saw) 'Kick their ass and take their gas'.

Sadly, I think he'd probably get at least half of the population to go along if consumption reduction requirements were spelled out.

Run like the wind! Run, damn you!

... your airplane is on the runway. RUN FOR IT! THE PEASANTS ARE COMING UP THE DRIVEWAY WITH PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES! FITZGERALD IS COMING ON A WHITE HORSE, WAVING A SUBPOENA!

:rofl: ROFLMAO

But then, I'm not Rove (thank the gods). I seem to be one of the peasants.

Hekate

situation. That's for starters, in trying to answer this question.

Never before in the history of this country have we had the vote tabulation controlled by the rightwing partisans of one political party, using secret means to count the votes, with no objection from the opposition.

I find this....amazing. (Are my party leaders insane?) Two rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--counted 80% of the nation's vote in 2004, using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it.

I mean, doesn't that strike you as strange?

Someone quite close to me, and quite savvy, said to me before the election that Bush and Cheney weren't acting like they needed to win. They were acting lazy and smug.

And he's right. I kept expecting Bush to dump Cheney--who would be serious political baggage in normal political times--purge a few staffers, and put a fresh face on everything. All their lies were being exposed. No WMDs had been found. The war wasn't going well, and continued to be very unpopular with the American people (a great majority of whom--58%--had opposed it since before the invasion). The torture of prisoners was revealed. The regime's outing of a CIA agent and her entire WMD counter-proliferation project--an act of treason--had had an independent investigation set up, by the outgoing CIA director, and constituted a ticking bomb under the regime, especially since it's become quite clear that it was a widespread conspiracy.

I know history. I know politics. Now would have been the time for a purge and a change. A Cheney resignation "for health reasons." Retirements of the key players in Traitorgate. Maybe a few mildly liberal ideas thrown at Congress, just to keep people off balance. Maybe replacement of Rove.

It didn't happen. No new faces and no new ideas, no re-starting of the regime's engines. Nothing. Just, well, coverup after coverup after coverup--to the point where they are now mired in a sticky web of lies and crimes, and have lost all credibility.

Some people left--Powell, Fleischer, Tenet--but it was more like sour grapes and disappointment, not a new start (--and may have been because of Traitorgate). They had already cleaned out all the interesting, independent people in the military, the intelligence services, and other agencies--people who would argue, people with viewpoints--leaving toadies and yes-men. There must have been a consequent dearth of ideas.

Still, even dictators have to do purges, start new programs, bring in fresh faces, regale the population with bread and circuses--even if it's a phony pile of crap. Bush just seemed to....die, leading up to the election. They held rallies and had to severely vet all the participants, and bus people in. Their rallies looked like meetings of the Denny's breakfast club--with all the old, white-haired club members and their overfed daughters-in-law bored out of their minds. The contrast with the Kerry-Edwards rallies was startling.

And the debates, my God! Bush came off as such a dumb dolt--who didn't have the charisma of a retail sales clerk; who couldn't sell anything to anybody, and probably didn't know how to fill out a receipt book. He was an embarrassment. He was pitiful. And he was wired! --after all the fuss they made about no notes and no pens. (I've always thought that the look on Kerry's face was, like, 'I can't believe this. Can this failed human being really be the Commander in Chief?') (Or maybe I was reading into it... I don't know.)

The thing is, they didn't have to lift a finger to win. It was all arranged. Their buds now owned the voting system--replete with highly insecure, unreliable, and extremely hackable, shiny, new, electronic voting systems, that a chimp could hack into (it had been demonstrated on the Keith Olberman show!) (And if you think Tom Delay went to so much trouble to set it up that way, and funded it to the tune of $4 billion, and they didn't USE that election theft capability, then I think you are...well...silly. Of course they used it to keep their gravy train on track!)

There was no sense of renewal, of new initiatives, or of any convincing arguments to vote for them. The American people were already fed up with them. Their approval numbers were so low, going into the election, that Zogby said they couldn't win.

And they didn't win, is the truth of the matter, and they didn't have to.

So, what to say to them now, if I were their adviser? With things so much worse? What to say to this illegitimate regime, whose every breath is a lie, who are skidding along just ahead of the criminal prosecutions, whose every project--except for looting the country blind--has fallen into disarray? (By the way, I don't think Bush knows that he's illegitimate; I think he just knows that his buds arrange things for him; and I think they manipulate him with delusions of grandeur.)

Well, I think the problem with this question is that Bush is not in charge. I don't think he's an innocent party, by any means. He's a major criminal. But I just don't think he calls the shots. Probably Cheney does--although I've been thinking a lot about Rumsfeld lately ("the Lurker"). So, if Cheney is actually the president, and the solution is to get rid of Cheney, how do you do that? And who does it? ("Get rid of yourself, Dick.")

I think, at this point--looking at the thing from a broad, historical perspective, and from way up in the rafters (say, the plight of Richard II, or the declining years of Emperor Claudius, or the malaise of Mao, or Brezhnev)--that the things required are things that Bush is simply not capable of doing. He's an acutely dependent personality, into cronyism. He's not very bright. I suspect they have to tie his shoelaces for him, program him, put him on his feet, maybe drug him, and keep things very simple, so he can get his lines out without too much incoherence. Something of a basket case.

And he just keeps doing the same things over and over. Nothing fresh about him. And he can't be freshened up. There isn't much there. An empty suit.

A public confession, a la Nixon and the "Checkers speech"? Or, a la Henry II (who had some problems with the Pope over killing that meddlesome priest, and had to crawl to the Pope in sack cloth and ashes)? A casting off of his handlers and a plea to the American people? An "J'accuse" aimed at Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld and the whole criminal bunch?

But I don't think he's smart enough to do that. And I think he's cowering right now, in fear of prosecution himself, and that some are blackmailing him. (They'd be fools, as part of this crime wave, not to have secured their own little black dossiers on everybody else, especially on Bush.) (I suspect that was what was going down between Bush and Rove during Katrina--and maybe between Bush and Cheney--blackmailing of Bush, in exchange for pardons, or no-bid contracts and total WH control in Louisiana. Traitorgate was boiling behind the scenes during Katrina, I'm sure of that.)

I really don't see anything Bush could do--short of something very dramatic, such as a confession--that could rescue his 'presidency' (--that really deserves to be put into quotes), or his reputation.

Oh, I think they'll rehabilitate him a bit, and maybe try to spin the Dem's modest gains in '06 (compliments of Diebold and ES&S) as some sort of miraculous Bush recovery. But the whole thing will be very stale and tiresome.

As for what the Cabal could do for them--the hit men, the Mission Impossibles--I shudder to think. Political conditions are such, for Bush-Cheney, that I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that the PNAC crowd would like "Pearl Harbor III" in order to restore some luster, topple a few more Mideast governments, kill a lot of their people, terrorize the rest, and steal whatever they have. (Syria doesn't have much, except for some strategic value.) They would also like to shut the American people up, and scare them back into their hovels.

However, I don't think that's going to happen, based on my assessment of the Neo-cons as window dressing for massive thievery; a disguise; a way for massive thievery to seem to have a point or some higher goal. Whoever is calling the shots behind Bush is not interested in governing, or building anything, not even a fascist state; and couldn't give a crap about Israel either. The PNACers, Israel, the nutcase 'Christian' right are all being used. The Neo-cons are permitted to run around creating chaos--with their ideology-driven incompetence--in order to create opportunities for looting. The looters do not have any principles; their philosophy was expressed by Rumsfeld: freedom = the freedom to loot. Greed is their only motive. (--very unlike the Nazis, really, who built a powerful industrial machine out of a broken country, and were bent on transforming society along Nazi lines--with Nazi youth groups, and German pride rallies, and an obsession with efficiency, making the trains run on time, making everything work right and to a purpose; by comparison, the Bush regime's actions seem to be aimed at destruction of the infrastructure and the people needed to support them; short-term looting, rather than long term imperialist planning; unlike the British, too, who were very methodical and very competent in their imperialist practices).

Besides, another 9/11, or some equally traumatic event, could as well turn against the Bush regime, as aid it, at this point. Katrina ripped off the phony veil of "homeland security." There is none. We are without protection. And if we get struck again--by man-made or natural catastrophe, Bush could find himself expelled from the WH and heading for the clink, even with a Bush "pod people" Congress. (Diebold may be able to give them a 5% tweak in elections, but they have to get the other 95% of their vote themselves--and another 9/11 or Katrina, or other high magnitude trauma, that Bush failed to prevent, or failed to respond adequately to, could get them all booted out of power.)

Finally, I think Bush and Cheney have outlived their usefulness to the grandscale looters who are behind them. There can hardly be any more tax cuts for the rich. We've reached our limit of billion dollar no-bid, do nothing contracts. The money just isn't there. We're facing a trillion dollar deficit. An Iran or Syrian adventure, at this point, just won't fly. B/C can't get a military Draft. (Only a War Democrat can do that.) How much more can be squeezed out of this lemon? Our global corporate predators are already moving on to China and India (where labor is dirt cheap, and big, big profits can be made). The U.S. government is broke. The American people are broke, most of us, and hurting badly. Revolution is in the air. Things could get nasty here. Better to have a War Dem in charge, to take the rap for any trouble--and maybe visit us again later, when we have created something more to loot. (Don't develop surpluses, seems to be the lesson; and scale the military way back, out of temptation's way.)

The Repubs might replace Cheney by force (or by negotiation), and try to ease Bush out ahead of the prosecutor, to be replaced by a kinder, gentler fascist (Rice maybe?).

But, really, the thing to understand is that so much of this is just illusion and the creation of perceptions. In real reality, Bush-Cheney and all their "pod people" in Congress would be long gone; booted out in '02 and '04. They are dirtbags. They are OBVIOUS dirtbags.

So, when I say they might stick Rice in there as VP, to be a kinder, gentler fascist, I don't mean they would be doing it to please the public. I don't think public opinion means much to them. A 35% approval rating? So what? They are NOT beholden to us. They are beholden to Diebold and ES&S. But they do want to give the impression of democracy (--just like Hitler did). So they get a fresh face in as VP, then send out the talking points and the spin, about the new leaf Bush has turned, and how this all new Bush regime will likely mean only limited gains for the Dems in '06 who still haven't got their message quite clear, and then they get Diebold and ES&S to make this all come true. Modest Dem gains (but not a majority) in '06; Rice in '08.

They write the history before it occurs; because they have the power to put just about anybody they want to, in office. If the war profiteering corporate news monopolies are letting Bush die a slow death, they have a reason for it--a longer term fascist goal of some kind. They are NOT doing it because the American people are suddenly, just now, realizing that they hate Bush & Co., and our diligent Fourth Estate wants to dutifully tell us the truth about that. Some things are real, that they report. Katrina was real, and visually compelling--and thus hard to spin, or to hide. So they told that story, or more of it than one might have expected. But, in a real political context, in a real democracy, Bush would have been impeached by now, over Katrina (and long before, over Iraq, and Traitorgate, if not for the complete failure of our air defense on 9/11).

Katrina washes by, and its dead bodies wash by, as if the buck stopped in Uzbekistan, or on Saturn, not here. A bit of fussing and fuming; Halliburton gets the pork; and it's over, for all intents and purposes, in what I call "reality-2": that narrow bit of human activity and event that the corporate news monopolies choose to put their spotlight upon (leaving all else in darkness). Katrina, oh yes, that was bad, wasn't it? Ho-hum. And Bush runs off to China.

If half of what has happened in the Bush regime--if even one tenth of it, or one twentieth, or one hundredth--had happened in any other administration, there would be foot-high scandal headlines every day, blossoming investigations and prosecutions, and impeachment proceedings, started by Republicans, anxious to quickly distance themselves from, say, the complete failure of our air force and NORAD to mount any defense whatsoever of the frigging Pentagon!

But we don't live any longer in a context of political accountability. And Bush and Cheney consequently don't have to do anything to "save" their administration. If it needs to be salvaged for some purpose (more looting), it will be. If not, they will both do well, get off scot free (most likely) and go play tiddle-de-winks on the floor of Bush's "presidential library" (--with its one book). It's been a farce, a sham, all along, and, for its victims, a tragedy, but Bush Cartel victims don't count. (--Cindy Sheehan's main point, it seems to me: to make one of them, at least, count).

Advice to them? Why give advice where it's not needed? Why write the P.R. scenario--and spin the illusions--of their recovery or their demise? Both are meaningless, with Diebold and ES&S counting our votes behind a veil of secrecy, and the war profiteering corporate news monopolies covering that up.

Slime machine in big time operation.