Does Sen. Brownback REALLY intone "All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus." as part of his stump speech?

Are we electing a President, or a Pope? Maybe we should have expected a puff of white smoke from burning of the actual straw poll papers when determining the winner Saturday...

Maybe Rove is going to run for President. I know, it sounds completely bat shit crazy, but so did a lot of the things that have come to pass during the Bush presidency...before they happened.

would need to be more eloquent. And certianly multilingual.

may be bizarre, but the "button on every computer" idea is possibly the most idiotic and absurd idea I've heard yet from this campaign. Why stop there? How about a button that will just raise my kids for me?

Hmmmmm.

Could work. How about a Rove-Gonzalez in 2008 ticket?

I'll start chilling the champagne now.

Katy bar the door. Rove is leaving, so something MUST be happening that he's trying to either a) avoid or b) distract us from seeing. This exemplifies the political atmosphere he created, or at least enhanced - one of distrust and suspicion of even the most innocuous actions by the government, because you never know when they're trying to sneak one past you.

Being from Ohio (luckily one of the Democratic strongholds) I would say that this type of pandering will definitely fly with the Republican base there. Gay marriage got the vote out in Ohio and the best plan for Republicans to win Ohio is to get the vote out with the story of a gay illegal immigrant parolee burning down a church because it wouldn't let him marry his muslim tuberculosis carrying partner.

Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, and Youngstown may be Democratic strongholds, but the rest of Ohio, particularly Cincinnatti is strongly Republican. Just note that Cincinnatti's county was one of only a handful of metropolitan cities to vote for Bush in 2000 and 2004 (Salt Lake City, Phoenix, and San Diego are the others that spring to mind).

My first thoughts on Turd Blossom's departure from the White House - he's needed on the campaign trail for 2008 and he just picked a horse (my money's on McCain).

Would be nice if it was a warcrimes trial for both of them and a group of others, say 20 like Cheney, Wolfowitz etc. ala Nuremberg. They all would certainly deserve it.

I doubt the Bush administration set up all this just to distract from the straw poll. There wasn't enough time to set this up, when clearly they were fully prepared for Rove's departure. If they wanted some distraction, any distraction, they could have found something, like rattling the sabers against Iran again. They certainly wanted the buzz or they wouldn't have announced this on Monday morning over two weeks before Rove's departure. They also must know the "more time with family" crap is recognized as crap, so either they want it known the real reason is hidden or they really are that dumb.

Could the investigations of the White House be getting closer than realized? Could they be hoping we'll leave Rove alone?

Its possible that Rove sees it as a main impediment that there is someone minding the Hatch Act while he's in the White House. Our Minister of Propaganda cannot work there legally without violating the law separating politics from public business.

One more thought, did anyone predict Rove's departure? I didn't, nor have I heard of anyone who did.

Hillary Clinton is ... fatally flawed...

But how? He doesn't say. Sen. Clinton is at or near the front and likely to be the Democratic nominee. She will have a lot of money, known experience in the WH, allies in the Congress, a first rate partner who is outstanding at running a campaign and a country as well as popular all over the world, and the electorate will have nostalgic memories for how the first Clinton Administration performed compared to its successor.

The Republican nominee will have to contend with that. None of those potential nominees have the experience or credentials to compare to Sen. Clinton.

But Rove has a proven track record of getting a Republican of any level of (in)competence into the WH. Winning campaigns is what he is good at. It may be the only thing he can do. And the Current Occupant is not looking to win any elections any time soon. (Unless he wants to be the Commissioner of Baseball, and even then he gets appointed by the owners.)

Also, Rove has "The Math" as he claimed to the NPR interviewer. Rove can claim to have the secret incantations to beat Clinton, and the current crop of Republican wannabees will believe it. (They are good on believing fantasies, especially those they want to believe in.)

So perhaps Rove is angling to be the campaign chief for the next Republican candidate. Let's not forget that his main goal has always been to establish a long-term Republican majority if not a one-party state. Maybe he's going back home to Texas to start planning the Republican campaign. And he wants Sen. Clinton to win, because he's got a plan to smear her.

Just a thought.

I think that Hilary Clinton's "fatal flaw" is that she's Hilary "Clinton". She is the one candidate that might be able to draw every right winger out of their enraged "I'm not going to vote" stupor and get them to the polls to vote against her (and any down-ticket Democrats who happen to be running at the time). It has nothing to do with her qualifications, but the right has been demonizing the name Clinton for over a decade and hating it is a pavlovian response. They hate her as much as her husband.

That said, it could just be a mind game Rove is playing with us. It's hard to know when somebody who is a compulsive liar is telling the truth.

I'm also from Ohio, unfortunately smack in the middle of that remaining Republican stronghold in Southwest Ohio (Hamilton, Warren and Butler Counties). To be precise, Cincinnati proper has a true Democratic majority, but the shrunken city itself is outweighed by the surrounding suburban communities of Hamilton Co. Small quibble, perhaps, but worth pointing out.

Also, the horrible Jean Schmidt nearly lost to relatively unknown Democrats twice recently -- so there IS hope for the suburbs of Cincinnati.

Ohio as a whole probably can't yet be called a Democratic stronghold, though -- just look at our state General Assembly, still firmly held by Republican majorities. Now, of course, we do have a very popular Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, and nearly enough other Democrats in high office to control Congressional redistricting -- but not quite.

Ohio is on the cusp of swinging Democratic again, as it was as recently as 20 years ago. Bush fatigue will provide the final push, if we're lucky.