Am I Psychic, Or What?
Dubya's Graveyard Spiral Picks Up Speed
by Tamara Baker
Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA -- Gloat, gloat, gloat.
Am I psychic, or what? (Of course I am.)
No sooner do I whip out a piece on Dubya's disintegrating campaign than the knucklehead goes out and forgets something every politician worthy of the name knows: Never Assume the Mike is Turned Off.
And it isn't just that he insulted Adam Clymer, who is merely one of the best, if not the best, reporter currently on the staff of the Old Gray Lady New York Times, by calling him a 'major league asshole'.
And it's not just that Dick Cheney, Mr. Rented Gravitas and Sop to the Religious Right, agreed with him in front of the open mike.
It's that Karen-Flipping-Hughes, Bush's "High Prophet", his hired brain and female Svengali, was arrogant enough to refuse to issue an immediate apology to either Clymer or the NYT, preferring instead to play Let's Blame The Victim and accuse Mr. Clymer of being a meanie to her charge.
Dear God in Heaven. These people couldn't pour piss out of a boot, could they?
It's now Day Two of Gaffe-Gate, and the news has circled the globe a dozen times, getting major play in every major media outlet known.
How big is it, you ask?
You read that right, meine Damen und Herren. They want to take over being George W. Bush's minders, because they -- and their donors -- are sick and tired of seeing over $100 million pissed away by a campaign staff so clueless they had to have extra help from the Christian Coalition in order to beat back John McCain, a man who had but a fraction of the money Shrub received.
Here's the scoop, courtesy of Alan Elsner of Reuters, September 5, 2000:
WASHINGTON - Some senior Republicans would like Texas Gov. George W. Bush to make changes at top levels of his campaign staff to help stabilize his presidential bid, party sources said on Tuesday.
With Democrat Al Gore seizing the initiative in the Nov. 7 election, some powerful Republican figures in Washington, D.C., are becoming increasingly anxious. Some would like to see the Republican nominee bring an experienced senior Washington hand on board to help run his campaign headquarters in Austin, the sources said.
"There's a big move afoot to get Haley Barbour to go down to Austin to take a hands-on role in the campaign," said one source, who asked not to be identified.
"There was a mild panic in the Palm dining room today," he said, referring to the popular Washington steak restaurant much favored by Republican consultants and lobbyists.
Ah, Haley Barbour. The man who helped Newt engineer the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, financed in part by millions in funny money from Hong Kong donor Ambrose Tung Young. (Remember those moonlight boat rides in Kowloon Harbour, Haley? I sure do.)
Why bring in such a patently corrupt man to take over Shrub's campaign? Mr. Eisner explains why:
Although Bush and Gore were neck-and-neck in most recent polls, some Republicans fear the vice president will move into the lead in the next round of surveys to be published this week.
The candidate ahead in the first polls after Labor Day usually wins in U.S. presidential elections.
And guess what? Most polls show Gore ahead right now.
The sources said some senior Republicans wanted to approach Bush's father, former President George Bush, to persuade his son to make some changes before it was too late.
It already is too late. The damage has been done, in public, on national TV.
The sources said some Republican strategists believed Bush made a mistake by trying to bypass the plan by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates to hold three prime time debates that would be screened on all major TV networks in favor of his own plan to hold one commission debate and appear with Gore on two interview shows, one on cable channel CNN and one on NBC.
"The fact is, Bush comes across looking like he's afraid to debate Gore in front of the eyes of the nation," said one Republican source.
No duh.
Everyone knows that Larry King is such a damned creampuff as an interviewer that Shrub very likely would be French-kissing him during the show -- although, what with Larry "Eight-Wives"' track record, young Master Bush would be better served by keeping his tongue to himself. And Tim Russert (who must be angling for the communications director job in an imaginary Bush Administration) just got done doing a jam job for the Bush campaign on Meet the Press, by simultaneously cream-puffing George W. and trick-questioning Al Gore.
However, the other networks have themselves put the ax to that idea: they simply won't cover the debates unless they're held in the traditional non-partisan, non-network-show setting. So poor little Dubya is either going to have to debate like a normal human being would, or admit that he knows Gore would fricassee him and serve him up in a nice Bechamel sauce. This will, of course, only aggravate the conditions that have led to the Dubya Death Spiral.
Any airplane pilot can tell you that there is a certain point in a spiral down to earth where you cannot pull out of the spiral no matter what you do.
Bush's campaign has reached that point, and things are so bad that it might be to the benefit of the RNC to let the Austin Dauphin and his entourage stay at the controls. Nobody likes to be tarred with the brush of failure, and the farther away the Republican National Committee can stay from the lepers in Texas, the better off they will be in the end.