bush flopping all over the palace

America's Big Malignant Tumor

Libs are salivating that Karl Rove might go down. But hasn't the worst cancer already spread?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

It's almost too good to be true. It's almost like you can't hardly believe it and it feels like it must be a nasty trick, a scam, some sexy lithe European fashion model smiling all coy and flirty as she offers you her thong underwear only to yank it away just as you reach for it as she instantly turns back into a hairy incubus and dashes away, cackling. Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease ... yank.

And maybe, if you're like me, deep inside your cynical Bush-ravaged heart you already know it won't actually happen, because no way is the world aligned correctly right now and no way is there any true justice happening anywhere near the White House right now, and what's more, the man in question is perhaps the slipperiest and sweatiest and most powerful adviser of a major world leader since an invisible purple demon hissed sweet nothings into Mussolini's ear, and therefore if anyone could finagle his way into remaining Grand Overlord Puppetmaster for as long as he damn well pleases, it's Karl Rove.

But despite all my doubts, the astonishing news remains: Rove, AKA Bush's Brain, AKA "Turd Blossom" (Bush's nickname for Rove), AKA "The Architect," AKA the most powerful and brilliant and deeply unlikable political thug most people have barely heard of because he's just that kind of secretive nefarious genius the likes of which makes women recoil and flowers wilt and moderate politicians break out in hives, well, Rove might have stepped over the line just far enough to end his current reign as Dark Lord of Shrubtown.

In sum, one could argue that Rove, as part of a multitentacled stratagems to help Bush lie America into war, intentionally blew the cover of an underground CIA agent (Valerie Plame), and did so merely as revenge, as a smear tactic against Plame's husband, who dared suggest, way back when BushCo was downright desperate to mangle CIA intelligence and fabricate any excuse possible to force us into this unwinnable Iraq war, that Saddam might not actually have any WMD at all.

That's the nutshell. Rove allegedly committed a treasonous act, a dire breach of national security -- not that it's all that difficult to do anymore -- and therefore Rove should be fired like right now and maybe even thrown in jail.

Doesn't that sound delicious? Like balm to your progressive and hope-deprived soul? Could Rove actually be forced to resign? Be fired? Imprisoned? Could this signal the end of one of the ugliest reigns of strategic terror in American politics?

Or maybe it's more salient to ask, Does it even really matter anymore, now that so much of the Rove-bred damage has been done? That is, if the cancer is already malignant and has spread to the nation's bones and the chemo only causes more of our dignity's hair to fall out, does it matter if you finally eliminate the DDT that caused the disease?

But as of this writing, Rove has already pulled a classic Rove "take that" maneuver, turning the accusation back on the accusers and pointing the finger away from his own soiled self (and that of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lawrence Libby, who also seemed to know of Plame), by claiming he learned of Plame's identity from someone in the media. Isn't that sweet? Doesn't let him off the hook, but it does make it more difficult for the hook to find solid purchase in his scaly flesh.

Look here. Rove orchestrated both of Bush's radically questionable presidential bids and was single-handedly responsible for everything from the noxious "Swift Vets and POWs for Truth" sham to countless carefully orchestrated terrorist alarms during key points of the last election, to an untold number of smear tactics designed to keep Bush in power and decimate the American spirit, tactics so vicious and dirty even the most jaded D.C. political insiders were forced to bow down in awe.

Rove, with his meager education and porcine sheen and this-one's-for-all-the-girls-who-shunned-me-in-high-school revenge demeanor, essentially reinvented American politics, created a new language of hate and fear, rewrote the GOP rule book to include the notion that actual facts don't matter and a politician can get away with absolutely anything if the denials are orchestrated just right and if the accusers are immediately counterattacked and mistakes are admitted absolutely never.

And perhaps most deviously, Rove handed the GOP the double-edged prize of the spiteful Christian right; he galvanized an entire throng of terrified Christians and hard-core homophobic evangelicals from the flyover states to get out there and vote lest those icky liberal gay people swoop in and eat their babies and steal their sons and have sex with their pastors and tastefully redesign their kitchens.

Here's the bottom line: Scandal notwithstanding, Rove's nastiest and most valuable work for this lame-duck president is now complete. And Bush is flopping all over the place: Social Security reform is a disaster and Iraq is an appalling catastrophe and the economy is running on fumes and this nation is an international punch line and Bush's poll ratings are sinking faster than Jenna Bush can slam down a Bud Light. All things over which even Rove himself has little control.

All that's left at the moment is to force into power a nasty right-wing Supreme Court justice with a mean glare and a misogynistic streak to help thwart America's prospects for hope and progress for the next 30 years, and Dubya can probably do that without Rove's help. Hell, Bush has already fed the Christian right's insatiable hunger for sexual dread and homophobia by packing the nation's lower courts with dozens of extremist conservative judges. The momentum is there. Pray Sandra Day O'Connor is the only one to go before 2008.

Besides, you just know that if Rove is forced out (or if he and Bush agree that he should step down, as a matter of clever strategy), he'll merely go underground, move his big pink nail-encrusted throne to a different bunker where he will continue interviewing GOP presidential hopefuls for 2008 in an attempt to gauge whose body he can most easily invade, who has the least amount of humanity and the greatest malleability and the maximum capacity for having their soul sucked through the eye of a needle. Meetings ongoing. BYO sacrificial blood.

This much must be admitted: Rove has already changed the American political landscape, is largely responsible for the giant wedge that now divides the nation by reinventing the Republican Party and turning it into an efficient, ruthless machine of war and power and misprision, a party that does a beautiful job of pretending to care about the little guy even as it sends him off to die in horrific wars while giving his salary to crony CEOs and calling it a patriotic tax break.

Or maybe this scandal is something completely different, less obvious, more excruciating than we want to imagine.

Maybe this scandal is, in fact, part of a larger and even more Machiavellian strategy orchestrated by the evil genius himself, one designed to backfire on the Dems and elevate Rove to the point of bizarre saint, a patriotic hero, in a fantastical but not unthinkable effort get Rove promoted, maybe even (eventually) appointed -- brace yourself, because this could actually happen -- to the Supreme Court.

Yes, it's possible. There is no law against it. And yes, Rove is capable of just such a master plan. Then it would be Justice Turd Blossom, to you. Honey, prepare the escape pod.