A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

There were some signs that they were not invincible, like the forced resignation of the seemingly indomitable Tom DeLay.

But it still appeared that like other radical governments – such as the Soviet Union – the Busheviks would succeed in clinging to corrupt one-party power for decades.

But after six years in office, reality has collided full force with the Disneyland/Goebbels vision of America scripted out of Hollywood by Rove, Luntz, and Mehlman and a cast of other screen writing credits. And as cautious as BuzzFlash has been over the years about Democratic victories, it looks as if the only way the GOP can hold the House of Representatives is to steal the election -- and you can be sure that this is the only reason Karl Rove is smiling, because they have the proven ability to do just that.

Yes, the vaunted GOP message machine has become a train wreck, as Iraq deteriorates into Dante’s inferno -- and six years of reign by demagogic sloganeering and photo-op posturing have come home to roost.

We have a President who dutifully channeled Karl Rove’s focus-group tested jingoism for six years suddenly sounding like a shattered record that someone has tried to glue back together. Bush has done everything from touch the third rail of Iraq by admitting it is similar to the Vietnam War to declaring that we are losing victoriously there. He has both claimed that we now have a timetable for withdrawal and accused anyone promoting a timetable of aiding the terrorists. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who Bush reportedly wants to overthrow, refused to accept a timetable that Bush both says exists and doesn’t exist.

Are you still in Wonderland with us, Alice?

We have a Vice-President (who, along with his Nixon colleague Rumsfeld, pulls the strings of the president) declaring anyone who wants to withdraw from Iraq is a coward. That’s the same man -- Cheney -- who sought and received multiple deferments from fighting in Vietnam during that conflict. If there are cowards in the world, it’s not the people trying to bring a dose of reality and common sense to our foreign policy, it’s Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld -- none of them with one second of combat experience.

We have over-the-top GOP ads, one from a Republican Congressman from Indiana claiming that if the Democrats win Congress, Nancy Pelosi will implement a "gay agenda." This is from a guy whose party leadership protected a gay man who was sexually stalking male Congressional pages!

Not only that, a significant part of the Republican leadership is gay. Take a look at Mark Foley, who was a GOP favorite. And wasn’t there a gay GOP congressman from Virginia who had to resign because he responded to gay ads for trysts and was caught on tape? And there’s Bushevik Congressman David Dreier of California, and more GOP congressmen, senators and White House staff who are gay than you can shake a stick at -- not to mention key Republican staff members on the Hill (and, of course, Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, who is still locking himself in the closet.)

As most non-Republican gay and lesbian publications note, no one gives a hoot that these GOPers are gay -- it’s their hypocrisy that merits our contempt. (Oh, and did we forget to mention that the would-be GOP heir to Jeb Bush’s throne, Republican Charlie Crist, is said to be gay, including by a young man claiming to have had sexual trysts with him? [1])

So after the Mark Foley affair emerges -- and Hastert’s desire to sweep it under the rug and expose our pages to a sexual predator -- and the revelations of a GOP "gay mafia," it’s an act of singular, but predictable, desperation for the GOP to return to its anti-Gay roots with ads like the ones being run by Hoosier Republican John Hostettler. [2]

And let’s not forget the millionaire propaganda shills like Sean Hannity and pill-popping Dominican Republic sexual hedonists like Rush Limbaugh who go completely off the tracks when they attack a beloved star like Michael J. Fox for having Parkinson’s Disease and supporting stem cell research. When the Republican carnival barkers are reduced to scurrilous, barbaric attacks on people with insidious diseases who would like to find a cure for them -- well, that, my friends (even beyond the hideous record October GI death toll count in Iraq) is a sign that the Republicans are in panic mode. Everyone in America knows someone with a neurological disease who might benefit from stem cell research. When you start taking away hope from people, you are down on the mat listening to the ref do the count.

Rove, no doubt, gave the green light for the virulent attack on Michael J. Fox, in all likelihood out of desperation to prop up his "base" in close rural and ex-urban congressional races -- and in the razor thin Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia senate races.

But it is a high-risk strategy to attack a man who is so ill he trembles uncontrollably, and an actor that everyone loves, to boot. It’s about as high risk as you can get without jumping out of the top of the Sears Tower without a parachute.

The wheels have clearly come off the GOP propaganda express.

Even the sentencing to death of Saddam Hussein a couple of days before the election is not going to give them much of a bump, if at all. People are still going to be wondering that if Bush and Cheney are such tough guys, how come Osama is still at large after all these years?

If Osama, financed by the Cheney/Bush Saudi oil buddies, is cleverer than the people running the American government, citizens of this country are starting to realize that the problem is our leadership. Osama isn’t that elusive; our leaders just aren’t up to catching him or beating back a bunch of backwater Jihadists who follow the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani Wahhabi Mullahs (as in the Bush/Cheney allies.)

And given that the Busheviks stole the presidency in 2000 -- in a broad daylight theft of democracy -- and given that private companies loyal to the GOP own the confidential legal rights to the software that runs so many voting machines -- and given that the Republicans are masters of Jim Crow style voter suppression -- you know that they will steal Congress if they can.

If you were to get Rove into Gitmo with a couple of German shepherds and ask him why he would rob American voters of an election, we are sure Karl would calmly respond: "Because we can get away with it."

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL