For sure, they're in a very bad place, both the GOP and the sycophantic Press. Which is why the GOP has increasingly relied on extragovernmental institutions to buttress their movement -- think tanks, reactionary foundations, groups like the Hoover Institution, the Federalist Society and the Council for National Policy (to name a few), private military firms -- they know they're losing the majority of American hearts and minds, so they've worked for the last 30 years to create their own institutions that govern their worldview.

Not a shadow government per se (although they are dreadfully secretive; I wish there were more whistleblowers in their ranks), but a parallel one that nurtures their ideology, protects it from actually having to be tested in the marketplace of ideas -- because they know in their hearts that their ideas will lose out in free and fair elections; that's why they try fearmongering and blame gaming and election fraud and voter suppression to carry the day; they have to, if winning is their goal.

And that's how the GOP creates political "stars" who've never served a day in public office, whose ideas are purely theoretical, who are disconnected from day-to-day reality. Sure, there are politicians who are on board with them, but the number of parallel insitutions that they've created dwarfs the number of actual representatives they have in government.

The Bush administration's ramrodding of the parallel government's agenda down the rest of the country's throat has dire consequences for the mainstream GOP as a party, for sure, but the parallel government will continue -- that was precisely why it was created: they needed something that could resist the threat of democratic elections; they privatized their political movement, in other words. They aren't public servants; they're private servants, and they're not serving the People or the Country, now are they? I think they've always seen elections as an unfortunate inconvenience, anyway.

So, when the GOP gets fried in 2008 (and probably a generation beyond), the parallel government the reactionaries have made will continue; the "movement" will not be undone by this election. They'll just find other ways of expressing themselves politically, unfortunately for the rest of us; I pray they don't get too desperate in their actions, because there are a lot of very wealthy people in their ranks. It sounds very conspiratorial, until you actually enumerate the ideological network that surrounds the GOP, and realize that Hillary was right when she decried the "vast right-wing conspiracy." Government should not be privatized; doing so only makes it accountable to its shareholders, which explains so much in how the Bush League and fellow travelers operate.

Great write-up on this, Mr. Cole; I think you nailed it, except for the abused spouse reference, which I think is too kind. Tenet failed the country, failed to do his duty, waited things out for a sweet book deal, and then tried to give his reputation a good whitewashing for the sake of posterity, not realizing (being a political insider and all, at least he was, anyway) that the verdict is already out on him.

Stuff like this makes me see Beltway insiders as truly a political class unto themselves, far, far removed from everyday Americans. Who acts this way in real life? When is a spade not a spade? When the Leader tells you it's not, that's when. The morality of the mighty, the tautology of the toady.

I can see the Bush League using this event (as they use every event and utterance) for political ends -- like if X publication's correspondents don't show up, there being consequences for their company, in terms of access to information from the White House and who knows what else -- it would be very Nixonian of them, and this administration has added many a page to the Nixon doctrine of misuse of power.

All part of the general leash-yanking the Bushies have done with the lapdog press ever since the Supreme Court voted them into office.