They're So Evil, They Lost on Purpose!

My colleague JE makes me aware of this blog post at Philly.com, which has to be a joke. I mean, I know that the left loves to think Karl Rove is an evil genius and that the GOP stole the last three elections before Tuesday. But even they can't believe that the GOP threw the election on Tuesday, can they? Seriously, Will Bunch must be joking...

So why in the name of God would Bush and Rove want to produce a flop in 2006?

Well, on the domestic front, there may actually be some advantages for Bush with a Democratic Congress. For one thing, they'll probably pass a favorite program of the president and his big-business buddies, the guest worker program for immigrants, since it was the conservatives in the House holding that up. The GOP was probably also ready to relent on the minimum wage, which was becoming a political albatross for them.

The other stuff that Bush wouldn't like -- higher taxes on oil companies and the rich -- he can always veto, if his 49 senators (nine more than necessary) don't block a vote before it gets that far. He's already been promised by Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean that he won't be impeached. From what we've seen, Bush didn't like the Republican leaders in Congress (especially the ousted Tom DeLay) all that much anyway.

But it really boils down to one word:

Iraq.

Everything we watched Bush do since Wednesday morning seems to be geared in one direction: Bringing Democrats to the table on Iraq. The problem for the Democrats is this: They came to office without a plan for Iraq. Bush doesn't seem to have one either. Nobody does, although James Baker and his friends are said to be working on one. But now whatever emerges from the coming discussions will not longer be the GOP plan. It will be the Bush/Democrats' plan.

And we're afraid that the war planners are expecting things to get worse over there in 2007. Good politicians are able to ensure that when bad fallout is inevitable, that the blame can be shared. A GOP majority in Capitol Hill would have guaranteed that "the Republican war in Iraq" would dominate the 2008 presidential race, and that equation would hand the keys to the White House to the Democrats for sure. And Bush's patrons -- oilmen and the defense contractors -- need the White House a lot more than Congress, especially after the recent expansion of presidential powers. And now both parties will have a stake in Iraq, and the mostly likely in the coming fiasco there.

I'm not even going to waste time dealing with the populist tripe about big oil and the defense contractors, let alone break down the asinine list of eight reasons Bunch offers to suspect the GOP of tanking the election. Seriously, couldn't Bunch have at least found time to claim Rove had bet on the Democrats seizing control of Congress? That might be more plausible than the pile of crap he proffered. And if he is joking, there's a fundamental problem with this attempt: it's not funny.

It's good to see the Philly papers haven't changed at all in the quality of commentary that is offered. No wonder I always bought the Inquirer and Daily News solely for the sports news. At least there you can get bad news with incisive analysis.