Memo to Democrats: Don't buy into Bush's act

November 9, 2006 8:35 AM

By DOUG THOMPSON

President George W. Bush decided before Tuesday's mid-term elections to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but lied, once again, to the press and the American people about his intentions.

Bush admitted Wednesday that he interviewed former CIA director Robert M. Gates over the weekend for Rumsfeld's job and said he intentionally misled reporters last week about the defense secretary's future to avoid making the Iraq war more of an issue in the election.

More of an issue? The Iraq war, and Bush's mishandling of it, was the issue in Tuesday's rout that swept Democrats back into power in both the House and Senate.

Once again, Bush proved himself unaware of the obvious and oblivious to the voter anger that sent Republicans packing. He blamed GOP losses on voter ignorance, saying Americans didn't understand the war in Iraq. He chastised political guru Karl Rove, saying "I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was." He later would claim the line was a joke but it wasn't. Bush was clearly pissed at everyone involved in Tuesday's election debacle.

Everyone but himself.

Wednesday's press conference was classic Bush. Offer up Rumsfeld as the first of what some expect will be a number of scapegoats for the Tuesday massacre, avoid accepting responsibility for his own culpability and talk about how he hopes to work with Democrats after six years of riding roughshod over them.

When asked about the outrageous claims he made about incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats during the election, saying they favored victory by terrorists, Bush dismissed his inflammatory rhetoric as "just politics."

"The election is over," Bush said. "It's time to move on."

Yet it's hard to move on with a President who openly admits lying and then rationalizes that lying as "just politics."

Bush's disregard for the truth is just one of his many ethical problems and moral lapses. He lives in a delusional world of his own making, a political allegory that mocks morality, ethics and the law. In his warped mind, all is fair in politics. He and his party proved that over and over in this past election season, using fear, racism, bigotry, homophobia and outright lies to try and hold on to power.

Now that he's lost, he wants to make nice and demands that the opposition forgive and forget.

A recommendation for incoming Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid: Don't fall for Dubya's act. He's a venomous political snake who will turn and bite at the first opportunity because that's what snakes do.

Don't turn your backs on him, don't trust him for a nanosecond and don't believe for an instant that he serves any interest but his own.

George W. Bush proved this past week that he will sell out anyone - including his own administration and his party's leaders in Congress. If, last week, he had announced his decision to replace Donald Rumsfeld, it might have swayed enough voters to keep at least the Senate in GOP hands.

But Bush, for reasons lost somewhere in his deranged mind, decided to lie again to the American people. It was, in the end, another desperate, unexplainable, act by a madman.

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue


Doug Thompson also publishes a personal web site at Blue Ridge Muse.