How long for Rove?

The glimmer of hope shining through the crack in the White House's facade (sorry, I've been overcome by Matt's funny links) has made me positively giddy. Will Rove go down? Or, how will they mend the crack?

Some options:

1.    They will stonewall until the media get bored (like, 3 days--this, from Amy Goodman's interview with David Corn this am);

2.    They will get Rehnquist to resign and everyone will talk about Court stuff, forgetting about Plamegate;

3.   Rove will resign and become even more powerful behind the scenes--he's done what he can do at the White House anyway and can now work on other strategies, campaigns, etc.

4.  Throughout the summer, they'll play little games, letting the Right get all self-righteous and beligerent and the different sides eat themselves up; then, in the fall they'll start bombing somebody else.

5.  There will be more requests for information and testimony which the White House will refuse to honor; ultimately, this will go up to ever higher courts which will support the White House. Bush and company will remain smug and proud and no one will care.

Comments

[another]

What a cynical list! I vote for number 6: Bush will eventually be impeached, Hillary will be elected, republicrats and their blog sponsors will rejoice, the world will groan, and nobody will care.

[Matt]

Color me optimistic, but I don't think they'll be able to shake this one. The media seems to have decided it's scandal season, right on schedule. (One has to wonder about this repetition, to what degree it's a symptom of our system, of our culture, how it simultaneously fuels and is fueled by a cyclical kind of cynicism and urge to purge).

They could still get out of it any number of ways, included some worse item to trump the news cycle, but the stakes are raised.

It all can't be coming as a complete surprise, though. Anyway Rove has no shortage of enemies, and Bush isn't about to let him go, so my guess is they'll either find someone to scapegoat or drag it out indefinitely stonewalling and on technicalities (option 1, then, though it may take more than three days). This can't be a prospect that appeals to them very much, for obvious reasons.

[RIPope]

He could fulfill the same function as he does now as a consultant, no? Unless he goes to jail, I guess.

I like what Stephen Colbert had to say on the Daily Show today, that the real dilemma Bush now faces is what honour to bestow on Rove. If Condi passes over an intelligence memo detailing the threats of Al Qaeda, and is elevated to Secretary of State, and George Tenet bungles the intelligence on Iraq, and is bestowed the Medal of Freedom or whatever it's called, what shall Rove get?

A golden washing machine replete with extra spin cycle?

Ah, well, here's hoping he gets sent to straight to the dryer.

[YH]

This is a bit tangential (and long) but very interesting: http://www.geocities.com/organdi_revue/February2001/MilanZafirovski01.html (via wood s lot)

[rogergathman]

The Rove business has neatly displaced the Downing Street Memo, so I think it is doing its job of making the press seem tough as they continue to operate with exemplary and systematic craveness.

If the press did want a scandal, perhaps it should look at the aborted pursuit of Bin Laden in 2002, followed by the excellent idea of outsourcing the "hunt" for the terrorists to a Pakistani General in Chief who used to be in cahoots with them -- somebody has to take apart that hunt metaphor, one of these days -- followed by the ramifying of the al qaeda network on the approved direct marketing model -- we eliminate the middleman in favor of the suicide bomber! -- as a top heavy, unnecessary but oh so in place security structure shows its predictable helplessness and haplessness, even as it puts its dirty hands ever deeper into the private affairs of the passive citizen.

It isn't 1984, it is Brazil.

[Matt]

Didn't seem to work so well for Kerry, that line, as I recall. What makes this straw unique is that it's a good patriotic crime, betrayal of our own CIA, one nobody can split hairs over. It's not a matter of debating policy, but a clearcut crime against ourselves(!), and the only defense is distraction or parsing words in a legal battle, both of which carry high risks for this admin.

I could be entirely wrong of course.

Brazil, yes.

[Jodi]

Stephen Colbert was brilliant last night: Supreme Court would follow the logic of the set without contradiction or exception. I do think the 'what about Bin Laden' line should have legs. It makes me want to go back to the sane, logical world of the conspiracy theorists.

[Name]

Or they could delicately murder Reinquist, I bet Karl Rove is thinking.

[Name]

For a photo of Rove and Novak, about a week prior to the leaking, and with Rove wearing a big red pin that says (no joke) "I'm a source, not a target," see here:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_07_17_digbysblog_archive.html#112192480458394868