Is George Bush Playing “Good Cop/Bad Cop”?

You have to wonder.

Out of the Justice Department come email after email confirming that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is a lying SOB, and George Bush, again, not only comes out and defends him, but thumbs his nose at the Senate in their attempts to get White House officials to come and tell them what happened.

It’s a win-win-win situation for Bush. He wins when he defies the Senate, saying that his assistants are protected by Executive Privilege, he wins when their attempts to subpoena them will end up in the courts, delaying the whole thing for years, and he wins when he can allow Republican Senators and Congressmen to rail on him for his intransigence and support for an Attorney General who has become his political lackey.

And then there’s Iraq. Bush promises to veto the House bill recently passed that puts limitations on who can be sent to Iraq as well as how long we will continue to stay in Iraq. Only two Republicans (Gilchrest and Jones) voted with the majority, but that’s two more than would have voted on this last year. His stubborn stance on continuing his illegal and immoral war will end up giving Republicans the excuse they need to distance themselves, and put themselves in line with mainstream America on this issue.

I think it’s true. I think George Bush is playing the Bad Cop. I think that Bush is giving his party ammunition and placing a target squarely on himself. The mid-term elections, as devastating as they were to the GOP, is mere preface to an over-the-horizon debacle in 2008 unless. . . unless Republicans are allowed to throw rocks at the man that Democrats are pelting as well.

The focus is shifting from Red vs. Blue to everyone vs. Bush. Republicans need to maintain that focus, and Democrats need to cast well-earned accusations back on the Republican Party and their elected, that they are the ones who enabled Bush. They put him in power by stealing the 2000 election, and kept him in power by (probably) stealing the 2004 election as well.

They brought all of our problems about. They are responsible. They should pay by receiving an early retirement package from American voters.

Republicans are worried as well they should be. American public opinion has shifted at this Pew Poll reveals.

- 50% of Americans identify themselves as Democrats versus a 35% Republican allegiance
- 54% express a favorable view of the Democratic Party versus a 41% favorable view of the Republican Party.

But it goes beyond politics and political beliefs; it goes toward core beliefs of Americans:

“…many of the key trends that nurtured the Republican resurgence in the mid-1990s have moderated, according to Pew's longitudinal measures of the public's basic political, social and economic values. The proportion of Americans who support traditional social values has edged downward since 1994, while the proportion of Americans expressing strong personal religious commitment also has declined modestly.”

Republicans can read the polls, too. They know that they have an uphill battle to regain American trust and that they need to start now. So as muse mentions in the muse blog, while Democrats have started early on to finish the rout in 2008, Republicans have similarly started early by distancing themselves from their former adored ones, even to the extent of casting stones at their glorious leader.

Hopefully American voters can still tell the difference between S _ _ _ and Shinola with all of this righteous posturing going on in the Republican Party.

I am characteristically not optimistic.