Rove was busting a vein trying to spin.

[bush equals idiot]

Wouldn't even let that John guy on CNN finish the sentences when he tried to tell him the gallup showed an immediate loss by 13 points.

I love watching that slug trying to tread water now. But alas you will drown this time baldy.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

1. That he keeps crawling from under his rock

is a sign his boy is going down.

[Skittles]

2. YOU NAIL IT A-S

absolutely

[bush equals idiot]

3. Yes buddy revenge is sweet.

[Lexingtonian]

4. Putting lipstick on a pig

can be pretty hard work.

Try as I may, I can't see how Rove pulls off a Bush win now. The 'issues' have all gone south on them. Their Main Man is caving in on stage and can't field opposition well anymore. They've maxed out on Christian Right voters only to watch a roughly equal amount of the moderate dupes bleed off to Undecided or Kerry outright. Gay marriage is dying as a wedge issue. Kerry is locking up the Blue States and is tied or ahead in three to five Red States.

What Rove has left is money and desperate activists and a voter base that buys any distortion or lie. What he needs to do is to prevent Kerry from taking a majority of the Undecideds in six to ten states who are proving resistant to the Bush sales pitch. This means Bush/Cheney/Rove going negative in a greater way- intensity- than ever before. It has only worked for them this year in August and early September when Kerry had almost no TV coverage at all and suspended most of his advertising.

It simply doesn't add up to a win for Rove or Bush anymore. They're running on fumes. Wasn't their side proclaiming "Hope is not a plan" to all the journalists before and during the Iraq invasion? And now they're running on "I'm...more optimistic" without any workable details. You got outplanned, outanalyzed, and outworked, Karl...and now you discover yourself struggling to get the tightening noose off your neck.

And yes, we know the old saw: Last guys don't finish nice.