As a coda to Republicans’ losing Congress this year, the firing of Donald Rumsfeld may serve as the tipping-point moment when the GOP could no longer ignore the fact that their former Dear Leader, George Bush, is indeed the Worst President Ever in the history of the United States.
History may well show that the forced resignation of the secretary of defense on the day after the election is the equivalent in the political realm of Pres. Bush’s mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has suggested that if Bush replaced Rumsfeld two weeks before the election, voters would not have been as angry about the unpopular Iraq war. Republicans would have gained the boost they needed, according to Gingrich, to retain their majority in the Senate and hold onto 10 to 15 more House seats.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, agreed with that assessment.
Bush should have removed Rumsfeld “as soon as he had made up his mind. And that’s a hard thing to calculate. But it’s highly doubtful that he made up his mind between the time the election returns came in on Tuesday and Wednesday when Rumsfeld was out.”
“And if Rumsfeld had been out, you bet it would have made a difference,” Specter said. “I’d still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.”
The same thought occurred to veteran Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., who was on the verge of becoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. After the election, Shaw said that if Rumsfeld had stepped down before last Tuesday, Shaw and other Republicans might have won.
“It could have made a difference in who is running the Congress,” said Shaw.
Let’s stipulate that lying — often gussied up as “misleading” or “shading the truth” — is part and parcel of politics. But George W. Bush came into politics with a record and a reputation as someone who lies compulsively.
In this instance, whether he lied to the press before the election when he said that Rummy and Cheney were doing “fantastic” jobs and would stay on through the end of his term, or whether, as my colleague Trish has suggested, he lied after the election in order to cover his tracks, the fact is, he lied one time too many — and he may have contributed to the undoing of his presidency, and his party, in the process.
Hat tip to JR
This is just more GOP BS. You remember that on the eve of the election Bush and Rove said “We’re NOT GONNA lose?” Well, guess what, I think they really believed it. If you’re wondering why, check this out:
http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2006/11/important-memo-from-marc-baber-of.html
Now, if Bush didn’t think the Repugs were gonna lose, why would he fire Rummy before the election? He was telling the truth when he said he had absolutely no plans to ditch Rummy. He just was lying afterwards, when he once again found it necessary to rewrite history. In other words, guys like Gingrich are just clutching at straws, trying to find some thing or person to be the scapegoat for the absolutely miserable mess the Repubs have made of this country. — Now let’s say for the sake of argument that Bush had fired Rummy just before the election. Since he had refused up till then to listen to one single word of criticism, it would have been rightly seen as a pure gimmick, because everyone knows that Rummy has been doing exactly what Cheney and Bush want him to do. This election was about balancing the government, it wasn’t about Rumsfeld.
Enough of this constitutional rotating monarchy. nonsense. We don’t need nobody to decide for us no more. What sort of government instead? That’s up to us.