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Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics

By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2006
Posted on Sat Jan 21, 2006 at 10:34:09 AM EST
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Karl Rove has been busy the past few months re-vamping the Republican's message so they can keep their hold on Congress. In a word, the message is fear. Fear, Rove thinks, will make the country believe:

  • Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance on Americans is legal
  • Bush's judicial picks will keep those terrorist detainees in their place and ensure our safety by curtailling our civil liberties
  • The renewal of the Patriot Act will protect us against another terrorist attack

We're no closer to getting Osama. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in more than four years, and there's no evidence the Patriot Act or subway searches are the reason.

In four years, the Bush Administration has given up on finding Osama, waged an unnecessary war against Iraq, kept more than 500 detainees imprisoned without charges or access to the courts and lawyers, while charging fewer than 2% with crimes, and instituted anti-terrorist measures like the no-fly list which is just as likely to include a member of Congress or an American toddler as it is a terrorist.

In the criminal realm, the Ashcroft-Gonzales regime has scared bumbling holy warriors into pleading guilty to avoid being designated as enemy combatents and sent to the bottomless pit of Guantanamo, while no one who played a part in the 9/11 attacks has been brought to justice. (And yes, Moussaoui, who is about to face a death penalty trial next month, is just another bumbling holy warrior who had no part in 9/11.)

There's some ingenuity in Rove's plan. If Americans accept it for the Congressional races in 2006, those of us who could make a difference in the Presidential election of 2008 will all be in jail.

They will get us for our google searches; by designating routine drug crimes as narco-terrorist offenses with exhoribant mandatory minimum sentences; by imprisoning parents who dare to share a joint with a kid in the house; by jailing college kids who refuse to snitch out their dorm-mates; by preventing law-abiding ex-offenders from voting; even by ensuring that ex-sex offenders have no place to live or work or worse, die because they are denied access to hurricane shelters.

There will be an exeption of course--for those who embrace faith and get religion. They will get many second chances. Accept Karl Rove's vision of America and the only free people left in America will be the fundamentalists -- both those on the radical right and the terrorists.

That's the truth behind Karl Rove's dreams for Republicans. If it's not your dream, your best bet is to work your tail off in 2006 and make sure the whole lot of them get booted out of office.

[graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL]

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    Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics | 4 comments (4 topical)
    Re: Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics (none / 0) (#1)
    by Lora on Sat Jan 21, 2006 at 11:09:43 AM EST
    First work your tail off to make sure that the vote you cast will count as you intended. To assume this is currently the case is extremely foolhardy.

    Re: Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics (none / 0) (#2)
    by squeaky on Sat Jan 21, 2006 at 11:20:35 AM EST
    Whenever a new Rove campaign of terror surfaces I think about the past weeks events. Could OBL's recent tape been a fake. The wingnuts are using that material to score big political points, while doing nothing to stop him. Chris Mathew's recent comparison of him to Michael Moore is insane....I smell a Rove. Kos summs it up
    Bin Laden's tape triggered, on cue, a flurry of anti-liberal sentiment, instead of a critical analysis of our nation's security. He made a threat against our homeland, but the always useless "color coded threat level" didn't budge. Yet instead of asking why the defunct system is still in place, Gibson & Co. are laughing at how Bin Laden quoted withdrawal polls.
    from georgia10

    Re: Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics (none / 0) (#3)
    by Edger on Sat Jan 21, 2006 at 11:52:45 AM EST
    Squeaky: The wingnuts are using that material to score big political points They keep on repeating the same worn out tactics that worked so well for them for awhile, likely because they have no idea what else to do, and all it's doing for them is slowing the erosion of support among their base, which is a bit at a time coming to the realization that they've simply been suckered. The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. "The most recent Zogby poll showed 52 percent of Americans support impeachment hearing for Bush and Cheney if they were found to have wiretapped American citizens without court authorization... The public is already ahead of our elected Democrats on this important controversy." "The deterioration in the president's numbers appears to be the result of eroding support among the investor class and others who supported him in his 2004 re-election bid, said pollster John Zogby. And the problem is the Iraq war — just 34 percent of respondents said Bush was doing a good or excellent job managing the war, down from 38 percent approval in a Zogby poll taken in mid-October."

    Re: Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics (none / 0) (#4)
    by jondee on Sat Jan 21, 2006 at 04:47:23 PM EST
    "Score political points." You have to spin like Rumplestilskin to make a still alive and well and threatening the U.S good news for Bush. One of these days youre going to have to give us a detailed account of the flora and fauna in that paralell universe you exist in Ras - that would be interesting.

    Rove Lays Out '06 Scare Tactics | 4 comments (4 topical)