Rove Is Pushing. And We Need To Push Back.

Over the past few days, the realization has dawned that the USA purge was conceived and executed for reasons far beyond the usual BushCo petty revenge and blind partisanship - Digby cites a McClatchy story that reveals Karl Rove's interest in voter fraud issues, and I read Rove's comments and was reminded of the cliche gangster quote that went something like 'Nice place you have here...be a shame if something happened to it...'

So the USA purge is more than a two-fer - it's a three-fer. Not only did it derail Carol Lam's investigation of Jerry Lewis (which would have shown the public just how corrupt the modern GOP actually is) and install Rove's former head of Oppo Research in Hillary Clinton's home state (and just in time for her presidential run!), but it also installed 'loyal Bushies' in 9 of the 11 states that Rove identified as being 'pivotal' in 2008.

Basically, Rove has rigged the 2008 presidential election, two years in advance.

So how do we fight that? Here's my suggestion, after the fold. Despite Rove and Bush's machinations, drinking a tall glass of bleach is probably more popular than the Republican party at this point. This is the result of two factors - the clusterfuck that is Iraq and the growing realization that Bush has stacked DC to the rafters with incompetent, corrupt party hacks and elevated crony politics to a level unseen in this country's history. And given Bush's legendary stubbornness and arrogance, he's not going to pull out of Iraq or cut his corrupt buddies loose. So this makes it a lock that the GOP's numbers stand virtually no chance of getting better over the next two years. Chances are that these two factors, along with the slow parade of new stories of corruption in every corner of Bush's administration (both Leahy and Schumer have intimated that there's a lot more to come), and the GOP's numbers could pretty easily get a lot worse.

Rove will undoubtedly still try like hell to sway electoral decisions in those pivotal states by pushing the 'voter fraud' canard (read Digby's post to see how he's already done this), but he can only do it if he's got a close election to begin with. If the contests are decided by more than a few thousand votes, he won't be able to run his 'voter fraud' scam in the first place.

To borrow a phrase from Bush, we have to wage pre-emptive war on Rove's scam.

The Democratic Party has to take Rove's list of pivotal states, and start working the refs right away, and the USA purge is the perfect means with which to do it. Imagine a series of ads, tailored to each state where a USA was fired, telling the citizens of that state that they and their senators and representatives have effectively been removed from any decision-making as far as their own US Attorneys go. Tell them that their reps will have no say in who they think would be the best man of woman for the job in their own states. Tell them that Bush will install people in their states that may have never even visited their states prior to their apppointment (as in the case of Rachel Paulose out in Minnesota).

And ask them if this is the type of government they want - where decisions for their state are being made by political hacks in Washington, DC.

Sometime in the next few days, I will post a sample ad to illustrate what I'm talking about, using either Arkansas or Minnesota as an example.

I may not be an A-List blogger, but I do know how to put together a 30-second ad. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will take the hint. It's happened before - I did produce a couple of ads that were used in Congressional races in 2002. Maybe those people are still watching, or someone will point them this way.

The most important thing we do before 2008 may be de-fusing Rove's ability to run this scam. And the sooner we do it, the better.