It’s astounding that Bush will have any sort of legacy at all, let alone a very influential one; but astoundingly, the Republican Party has embraced most of Bush’s unpopular policies, as well as his “with us or against us” mentality.

After decades of moving farther to the right, I thought after losing the midterm election Republicans might possibly recognize the reality that Bush’s policies have fallen out of favor and the GOP would begin to moderate some of it’s views and rhetoric. Boy was I wrong.

Instead, the lesson they learned from the polls and the election was that Bush was not being extreme enough, and rather than beginning to pull our troops out of Iraq – what the public said it wanted – we got “the surge” instead. Hardly anyone in the GOP dared tell Bush that this was not message of the election, and if they did, they were immediately ostracized from the party (e.g. Hagel).

Bush’s legacy is one of extremism and lawlessness. Almost all of that party’s leaders and media henchmen are behaving like thugs and all of their talking points are geared toward an angry mob seeking vengeance. I’ve now given up on them ever moderating their behavior and expect nothing but more extremism as they become increasingly angry and less powerful.

Bush’s legacy is in the process of destroying the Republican Party, but in doing so, it may take the entire country down with it as we descend deeper into depravity under the guise of fighting evil that, at some point, will include “the enemy within” – liberals, Democrats and former Republicans who fail to endorse the radical party line.

Thus, their fight against “evil” inevitably will include millions of Americans. And their enemy, as Pogo once observed, “is us.”

Keeping the lights off is exactly what Politico is doing when it promotes the campaign to pardon Libby insisting that it would be “politically good” for Bush to pardon him.

If you turn the lights on, however, you’ll find that 72% of public disapproves of such a pardon, according to Time poll, and other polls have found similar majorities against it.

But Politico and the Beltway media’s constant campaign has had an effect with some of the leading candidates GOP expressing outrage over the sentence, as if that’s what the public is demanding – it isn’t.

Thompson seems to be the worst, denying everything about the case in the National Review, a column as disingenuous as anything I’ve seen. (Larry Johnson and other CIA employees have responded.)

The only way they (Republican candidates and their cohorts) can get away with these distortions is if the media operates in the dark, ignoring the well-lit reality in favor spewing of GOP talking points.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200706180003?f=h_top

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jun/15/a_letter_to_the_rnc_from_former_cia_officers

Glenn makes an excellent point that this country has made its worst mistakes when we have exaggerated the threat of Evil and overreacted.

Can there be any doubt that we’ve overreacted when we take seriously the neo-con gasbags who routinely insist on our “news shows” that Bin Laden – a 6 foot 5 man who rides a mule while hooked up to a dialysis machine and lives in a cave – is a much greater threat to us than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union with its nuclear arsenal capable of immediately destroying us?

They should be laughed off the set.

But instead our dysfunctional media gives a prominent platform not only to them, but to those who want justify our embarrassing overreactions from the past to justify future fiascos. They give lots of air time to Ann Coulter who is trying to resurrect Joe McCarthy and the excesses of the red scare of the 1950’s and Michelle Malkin’s racist rants and support of internment based upon race are a staple of Fox News.

Anyone who watched Robert Greenwald’s documentary Outfoxed knows that the campaign of fear throughout our media (intended to cause an overreaction) was intentional and endemic.

In short, media complicity was necessary for our overreaction and exaggeration of the threat and has been instrumental in promoting the “mindset” that Glenn so accurately describes.

At every step of the way, our media has enabled and encouraged the policies that are contrary to all of fundamental beliefs and our Constitution.

Rove, on the other hand, does not have a history of interest in foreign policy, but does have a long history of successful dirty politics.

While we don’t know for sure whether George Bush takes his Christian evangelical convictions seriously, we do know that Karl Rove does not - he has said so. That, however, did not prevent him from exploiting those who hold such beliefs.

He made weekly conference calls to Christian leaders during elections so they would know the GOP “talking points” of the moment and widely distribute them on the “under the radar” right-wing Christian radio network.

The “Christian” leaders he dealt may or may not believe what they’re preaching either, but the “good vs. evil” paradigm is a high selling product among their authoritarian followers.

This mentality has always sold among “the base” and, as Glenn documents, it now has been appropriated for the wider public and used to sell the “war on terror” and everything that entails – the power grabs, the abuses, the secrecy – and the “with us or against us” mentality has even led to the incompetence we see on such a grand scale by appointing “loyal Bushies” over people who actually know something about what they’re supposed to be doing.

Whether the people selling this product (of exaggerated fear and “good vs. evil” thinking) actually believe it or not doesn’t change the fact how it has been used – as a “brand” in a successful marketing strategy.