I saw at least one reference to the possibility that Rove et al are controlling members of Congress (including Republicans) through blackmail. I suspect that this is a significant contributing factor to the lock on power now held by Rove et al. Remember the Foley page scandal? Why didn't that scandal blow the roof off of Congress? Why was the fallout, while real and substantial, limited in scope? There were signs that Rove knew all about Foley long before the matter hit the media, yet no one ever investigated that possibility, as far as we know. My suspicion is that there was a great deal of repulsive conduct by members of Congress that never was mentioned in the media (I include in the definition of repulsive conduct knowing about Foley-like behavioral problems and not blowing the whistle.) People like Rove could have easily used their knowledge of such conduct to control the behavior of certain members of Congress to prevent the scandal from doing more damage to the Republicans than it did.

Anyone remember Strom Thurmond and his secret love child? How often do you think J. Edgar Hoover used the existence of that child to control the behavior of Thurmond?

But blackmail is just one tool these power freaks use to keep their lock on power. Corrupting the Department of Justice and US Attorneys is particularly pernicious. Then they try to dress up their power grab by devising and publicly espousing their legal "theories", theories which would have received a failing grade in any respectable law school at the time I attended law school.

The theory that the President can do whatever he damn well pleases, the Congress and the Courts be damned, is an anathema to our form of government. But the only way to prevent this theory from becoming a reality right now is to confront Bush. Congress has to lead the way. The Courts only rule on cases brought before them. And even then the rules of "standing" keep courts from issuing rulings in certain suits brought by individuals, as the recent 6th Circuit ruling illustrates. Congress must push back, firmly. Congress must lead the way.

Others must also play their part in confronting Bush, in a non-violent manner. Cindy Sheehan, when she first became a household word, effectively confronted Bush for quite a while. (I stopped paying much attention to her after she cozied up to Hugo Chavez.)

Why is effective (non-violent) confrontation by many different people and institutions so important? Because people need to understand that they have a personal stake in what is going on. Many people in the US don't understand (sometimes as the result of wilfull blindness, mind you, but certainly not always) what is at stake for them. The more people who confront Rove et al, the greater the chances that people will understand what is at stake.

One reason why Rove et al have been so effective in the past is that they make things personal to many people, often through the use of fear (one example among many: Chertoff's infamous "gut feeling").

Even though lots of people don't like Bush or his policies, they can't (or refuse to) conceptualize how Bush and his policies are going to adversely affect themselves. They feel they will be sufficiently well off even if Bush keeps pursuing the courses of action he is presently pursuing. Find a way to change that perception. Bush, Cheney and their minions will then be removed from power.

I hope you're right. But consider these two factors:

The clock is running out.

The Dems in Congress haven't even impeached Gonzo, and he's definitely "easy meat."

Nixon was not impeached. Two men were instrumental in getting him to step down, both Republicans. Pete McCloskey made the first floor speech suggesting impeachment.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0717-19.htm

Then a group of GOP heavies, led by Goldwater, went to Nixon and convinced him not to put the country through that (I think that Nixon only had 12 votes out of 100 Senators). There are no Republican heavies in the GOP, today and even Bush is no Nixon. He'd just tell them to "bring it on".

Here is a Republican's view:

The Long Shadow of Watergate and Republican Roads Not Taken ...

The full-throated accolades to and tendentious assaults on Ronald Reagan's historical reputation will make this a tedious week for me.

I am a Republican who voted against Barry Goldwater on the issues in 1964. Subsequently, I am certain that Goldwater was a man of integrity beyond anything Lyndon Johnson could imagine. But I also voted against Richard Nixon in 1968 and twice in 1972, against Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, against George H. W. Bush in 1988 and 1992, and against George W. Bush twice in 2000. I was born a Republican in the South, when we were an insignificant minority. My claim to being a Republican ante-dates the Gipper's and the claims of his Dixiecrat-come-lately fans. I recall a political landscape in which there were polarities, but they were not co-terminus with political parties and the landscape was the healthier for it.

I grew up in a Republican Party which named responsible federal judges in the South on whom the civil rights movement could rely for even-handed judgments and a Republican Party whose support was essential to the passage of major civil rights and environmental legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. I supported California Congressman Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey in his primary challenge to Richard Nixon in 1972. We McCloskey supporters were a tiny minority of Republicans in North Carolina that year, but large enough that Nixon's CREEP machine had moles among us. McCloskey recalls a time when conservatives knew that conservation was a conservative issue and that there is honor in telling the truth about our military operations. I supported Illinois Congressman John B. Anderson's Republican and third party challenge to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980, even serving on his state campaign committee in Delaware. Anderson seemed to represent a viable alternative to the flabby economic and foreign policies of the Carter administration and he warned the country that Ronald Reagan's promises to cut taxes dramatically, vastly expand military expenditures, and balance the federal budget were not compatible. They weren't and he didn't.

Pete McCloskey and John Anderson were the first Republicans in the House of Representatives to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Still, the long shadow of Watergate hangs over my Republican Party. The levers of its power have not gone to the Andersons and McCloskeys who knew that a clear repudiation of its scandal was necessary. Rather, they have fallen to the Reagans and Bushes. While Anderson and McCloskey called for Richard Nixon's impeachment, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, George H. W. Bush, called for balancing inquiries into Democrats' foibles. As CIA director, he helped to install a brutally repressive regime in Chile. Short of full-throated repudiation of Watergate's scandal, greater reticence about regime changes abroad, and the assertion that integrity matters, the doors were open to trading arms with enemies afar to support insurgents against enemies near at hand, to exposing a CIA intelligence officer as an act of political retribution, and to giving grandiose subsidies to an agent who traded in our own national intelligence. My party is in the hands of people who do not recognize their own betrayal of our national interest and values. There was a time when that would have been unthinkable.

Posted on Monday, June 7, 2004 at 6:42 AM

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/5524.html

So, I'm inclined to agree with you, as much as it galls me to acknowledge it.