Karl Rove’s November Surprise
Has anyone else noticed when the Saddam Hussein Tribunal is going to meet to decide Hussein’s fate? The date is November 5. Not so coincidentally that date is just in time to make the news cycle before the November 7th election. It was postponed until then, I’m sure at the behest of the US puppeteers in the Oval office.
This is exactly the type of spin that Karl Rove is famous for. And here’s the tip-off. An incredibly jaundiced article published on the 18th of this month in the Washington Times had this to say;
“President Bush has begun to paint this year’s election as a choice between strength and weakness on national security — and the stark differences will show Americans the true nature of Democrats, Mr. Rove said.“It is useful to remind people what [Democrats] said and what they do. I think they have given us here, especially in the last couple of weeks, a potent set of votes to talk about. You had 90 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist-surveillance program, nearly three-quarters of Senate Democrats and 80 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist-interrogation act. Something is fundamentally flawed.”
According to The Nation blog, there have been three times Bush’s popularity has spiked upward– the date on which Saddam was captured, the purple fingers election, and when Zarqawi was killed. Therefore it’s likely the Republicans will get somewhat of a spike from this, providing it doesn’t backfire. But I find Karl Rove’s characterization quite interesting here. Oddly enough I agree that something is fundamentally flawed, but I disagree about what’s flawed, as do most Americans. Rove is basically saying that torturing prisoners and the abrogation of US Citizen’s rights by wiretap is necessary for our security (geez, didn’t Hitler say something similar?) So if the tribunal declares that Saddam will be executed, and they do it right before the election, this plays into this whole fear strategy. What is truly amazing about it is that there are more US citizens killed in car crashes every year than have been killed on US soil by terrorists, yet I don’t see this administration urging everyone to take the bus to work, oh geez no, that would use less gasoline and fatten fewer Texas pockets. The problem with this strategy is that because it is so transparently NOT of Iraqi manufacture it’s likely to result in a backlash of sectarian violence in Iraq, and maybe in time for that same news cycle, which likely means more US military corpses being sent home. And more blood on Republican Hands will not win them the election.
Technorati Tags: Karl Rove, Bush, Saddam Hussein, November Surprise, terrorists, Security, Election
