Blame Game Baloney

The conservative spin-meister’s latest linguistic creation, "the blame game", has most of America laughing. Are the conservatives kidding?

After years of misjudgments, bad calls, smear campaigns, cronyism, corporate pork, fiscal recklessness and outright lies, the question becomes: under what scenario should Americans criticize and hold accountable their leaders? For conservatives, the answer is none.

Because their politicians are ostensibly guided by Christ, they may believe themselves incapable of error, much less enormous blunders. But in reality, from the beginning, Bush and his administration have been desperate to deny, quash or smear any dissenter because their political house is made of cards. When a house is brick-solid, the removal of a single brick has little bearing on the structural integrity of the whole. And when an administration is solid, it can afford to remove or admonish operatives who make bad decisions or simply screw up. But when a house is made of cards, one little change and the whole thing comes tumbling down. In the case of Bush, taking responsibility for any imperfection becomes impossible because the deception and imperfection run all the way to their shaky core.

There has never been anything honest, capable or virtuous about the Bush crew, and they know it. Their chief strategist, Karl Rove, is the dirtiest, sleaziest, back stabbing, scheming, smearing, cynical, take-no-prisoner, ends-justify-the-means scumbag in a generation. And that’s just the beginning. The improprieties, favoritism and conflicts of interest are so vast that an observer is forced into one of two radically different camps. One, that no administration could be this bad, and any critic of it must therefore be an unpatriotic liar. Or two, that this is the most inept, clueless, arrogant, deceitful, vindictive, manipulative administration since Nixon, maybe ever. Recently, the second camp has been swelling while the first camp has become increasingly shrill.

Take President Bush’s recent speeches concerning Katrina. Clearly rattled by the hurricane of criticism that followed, he has been slurring his words, upper lip twitching, jaw grinding back and forth, looking almost cross-eyed. The media finally grew enough backbone to hold his feet to the fire for the failure of FEMA to properly respond, and the ensuing orgy of investigation confirmed that Brown, like so many Bush appointees, was a no-talent hack whose job was a reward for loyalty, for fund raising, or simply a paid-back favor.

At this point, watching a conservative try to defend Bush is like watching an object lesson in self deception, denial, tortured logic and outright nonsense.

When politicians don’t want to play the blame game it is because they are to blame.