Playing McCain

At this point, I honestly think that Rove & Co is playing McCain like a fool.  Because he’s totally doing Bush’s dirty work and there’s no reason for it.  They whooped his ass good in 2000, when he thought he had a real chance of winning the Whitehouse.  And now he’s willing to put his faith in their wisdom to win it for himself.  

But I don’t think he’s yet realized that they’re not trying to win it for him yet.  They’re still trying to pull their own asses out with this one and using him to do it.  Burning through his credibility the way they’ve burned through everyone else’s.  Because they think that credibility and political capital is something that you use up, which is why no one in the Whitehouse has any left.  And so now they’ve got generals and whatnot feeding him crap to get him to support Bush’s War, thinking that he’s doing it for himself.  It’s possible he invented that stuff on his own, but I wouldn’t doubt at all if he was merely uncritically accepting what he was being told and can’t figure out why nobody else is buying.

And sure, his political future is somewhat tied to the fate of the war, but again, I think a big part of that is because they told him to do it.  They’ve assured him that this is his road to victory and that they won’t support him unless he supports Bush and the war.  And now he’s getting screwed over royally.  What he’s saying about the security in Iraq is dumb and his trip to Baghdad was incredibly dumb.  

Hell, at this point, I seriously doubt that a majority of Bush’s 30% approvers even want to hear about this stupid war.  They won’t turn on Bush or admit to some “liberally-biased” pollster that they’ve dropped their support, but almost nobody wants to hear about it.  After all, it’s really screwing with their War on Liberals, and that’s all they were really in this for.  Sure, they hate Arabs, but Arabs are far away, and the libs are right here.  And Bush’s War has surely given those dirty libs the upperhand.  

And in that regard, McCain’s trip has totally undermined everything they’re trying to do.  Even in the world of phony propaganda, the liberals scored a point with McCain’s stupid trip.  So while they’ll never admit that they don’t want to hear about the war, that’s just because they really don’t want to hear about it.  And so for the Bushies, their only hope is to fool the Republican hopefuls into cheering for it, because there ain’t nobody else who wants to do it.  And for as much as they were hoping to establish an ascending GOP Dynasty, their only concern still involves trying to make the first emperor look legitimate.  And that’s a cause even more hopeless than the war itself.