Liar Liar

Though none of the mainstream media outlets would touch it, rumors swirled around the Blogosphere this weekend that Bush Administration mastermind Karl Rove is about to be indicted for perjury and perhaps more.

I suspect it’s no mere coincidence that President Bush has a prime-time speech scheduled tomorrow night on the subject of Immigration. It provides a convenient spotlight to do damage control on the same day Rove’s indictment is likely to go public.

But no amount of damage control can salvage the Bush Presidency. Rove’s resignation will be the death knell of the Bush regime--perhaps the most corrupt and incompetent in our history. The Bush accomplishment list will remain blank until the end. But it’s not just Bush.

On Meet The Press today, Newt Gingrich responded to the recent corruption scandals and White House troubles by saying “I think there’s a problem in both parties.” Which is the dishonest dodge a lot of Republicans continue to use to hide the fact that their party has completely eclipsed the Democrats in the arena of corruption, bloat and pork.

The Republican Party has actually become a Reagan Republican’s worst nightmare. Where they used to stand for fiscal responsibility, they now support the biggest debt binge ever (and still growing). Where they used to stand for small government, they now support a President whose actions come closer to Big Brother than any in our lifetime. Where they used to stand for military savvy, they now stand for disastrous strategy failure. Where they used to stand for values, they’ve become this decade’s cigar smoking, poker playing, hooker hiring sleazebags.

When the Supreme Court gave Bush the Presidency, Republican friends assured me that even though Dubya seemed developmentally disabled, his hidden genius was in picking world class advisors. But now that several of his advisors and cronies (DeLay) are in jeopardy of going to jail, along with a host of supporting players from Cunningham to Abramoff already locked up, it seems my friends were perfectly wrong. The Bush Administration, including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Don Rumsfeld, appear to be some of the most arrogant, treacherous, radical, cynical, inept, incompetent political operatives in memory. In short, disastrous.

Nowadays, when anyone admits being a Republican, I always respond: “Oh? You must hate George Bush.” Wide eyed, they often muster, “What do you mean?” But the answer is obvious. George Bush has as much in common with a Reagan Republican as a Sunni has with a Shia. Both Sunni and Shia worship the Koran, and both Bush and Reaganites worship tax cuts, but that’s where the similarities end.

Early in his Presidency, some opponents of Bush labeled him a liar. Conservatives dismissed the charge as hysterical liberal hyperbole, but history has proven them wrong, too. Not only have Bush, Cheney and Rummy been caught in too many lies and distortions to dismiss, but two of their top advisors allegedly lied to the Feds, not to mention the public.

As with any organization, corporate culture emanates from the top. In the Republican Party, dishonesty and hypocrisy have become endemic. And in the Bush Administration, lying seems woven into the cultural fabric. The likely indictment of Karl Rove will soon add yet another strand to his awful, sordid tapestry.