Do the White House and GOP not see what they're doing to themselves?

Don Claybrook

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Sat Sep-10-05 11:30 AM
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Do the White House and GOP not see what they're doing to themselves?

The GOP, particularly the Bush Administration, is beginning to remind me of a slow motion version of the explosion of the Hindenberg. They're actively creating one disasterous embarrassment after another, all in front of the cameras of a jolted and disgusted 4th estate.

FEMA is the non-humorous laughingstock of the planet now. And still, right now, today, they're ruining everything they touch.

Cheney was told to fuck himself twice right after he arrived on the scene in Bush Coutry, and on live national television, having to answer questions about whether he's getting this kind of thing with any frequency these days.

The Idiot King has opened his elitist pie hole to horrendous results many, many times over the past several days, not to mention his newest media incarnation as a narcissistic frosting-licking, Brooks Brothers guitar-playing faux cowboy.

Michael Brown...hell, what more can be said about this pitiful and small man, except that he's gone back to Washington to wait for more disasters?

Santorum just can't help but destroying his own reputation, with a new and damaging pronouncement every few days. Fine the victims and blame the weather service for the hurricane after their very precise and very accurate forecast. It's almost as if he's screaming at his constituents in Pennsylvania, begging them to send him straight to hell next November.

Barbara Bush and Tom DeLay are featured in the nation's front pages, showing as much understanding of the poor and the victims as George Bush Sr. showed towards understanding the price of a gallon of milk with his rainman-esqe $20 answer. The Happy Darkie Thesis that they're both pushing has been quite damaging for Bar Bush, who snookered many into thinking she was the nation's grandmother. It's not clear whether it's even technically possible for DeLay's image to be any further destroyed, but he's putting in a spirited effort.

Laura Bush has been sent out, not only to defend her blameless man, but also to hip us all to the fact that we're just seeing the same images over and over in the liberal media, and that the place really doesn't look all that bad. I haven't seen anyone bite on that tripe so far.

It's plain for all to see that the White House is wildly casting about for a marketing hook. McClellan's introduction of blame-gaming into our lexicon was derided out of existence after only two days. It was too pathetic for even Scott McClellan to continue uttering.

They're already handing out contracts for cleanup and rebuilding to Bush-allied cronies, including, yes, Halliburton, in its award-winning KBR aspect. They seem knid of incapable of understanding that JQ Public is actually paying attention this time, that their actions have been noted in the building, and that people may just be interested in how the $60 billion down payment is going to be apportioned this time around.

The former lapdogs of the Bush Administration just won a critical victory over the federal government's attempted crushing of the first amendment.

The Karen Hughes PsyOps Czar coronation was a very proud moment for them, in which she had the chance to jump on the bandwagon and blame the victims, but this time, to blame them for the image of the US abroad.

I'm not hearing any accolades for the impartial investigation that Bush will be conducting to see whether he or someone else was to blame. For that matter, I'm not reading rave reviews about Hastert and Frist's impartial GOP investigative panel.

Some zero of a Republican consultant has been quoted as saying that in a country of 300 million people, losing 10,000 isn't that big of a deal. These things happen from time to time. This is the guy who tells the rest of these bozos how to craft their messages to the media. Is it then any wonder that we have a front page Washington Post article about how the GOP is having a tough time finding a human and compassionate voice when it comes to the aftermath of Katrina?

Eyebrows are raised all over about the GOP's assertion that it intends to push ahead with their legislative agenda, which has been specifically tailored to hurt the poor. A time like this is no time for not screwing the poor.

The self-styled personal responsibility, strong individualist conservatives are wondering now what sort of bill of goods they've been sold when their cutout hero can't seem to take responsibility for anything, ever. Why does he keep sending Mom and Dad and Laura and anyone else he can hide behind to explain away his mistakes? Why, they ask, do we have to continually disregard the evidence put before our lying eyes and believe the alternate story as floated by the administration. The poor administration has had to deal with all sorts of situations that just aren't fair, messes that look like they're made by George Bush, but always blamed on terror, or Bill Clinton, or recessions that happened before he was around, or levee breaks that just couldn't have been prevented, or freedom haters, or memos that couldn't possibly have let us know that Osama was determined to strike inside the US and that he was fond of the idea of using airplanes. It's the end of the line for excuses. They're falling on deaf ears.

It really does look like everything they've done in reaction to Katrina and the resultant fallout has been the poorest choice that could have been made in each instance. Will the bleeding stop, or will they just keep on destroying themselves until there's nothing left? Even if they stopped royally screwing everything up right this instant, can they ever claw their way back to any sort of halfway respectable approval rating? Trying to see it from their perspective, it looks to be a next to impossible task.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of wasters of life and limb.