Rove's Diary: Taking Care Of The Blue People

Dear Diary: It was pathetic -- and so deeeelicious! The liberals hadn't a clue they were about to get their heads handed to them.

The Dems read the favorable exit polls, they saw Zogby's final poll showing their guy way ahead, they heard about the enormous number of new, especially young, voters -- Kerry's victory was in the bag. Heh heh heh.

Within an hour or two, they were mincemeat, as our totals not only kept pace with theirs but mysteriously surged ahead in key states.

Liberals are such fools. They knew my history and knew what we were going to do -- insure that our evangelical base showed up at the polls, smear Kerry at his points of strength, "suppress" the vote wherever and however we could, present them with some "October surprises." In effect, we dared them to try to stop us from doing what we said we'd do. But they couldn't because they prefer to whine and make a lot of intellectual noise rather than get in there and slug it out with us in the dark alleys of contemporary politics.

And then there was the huge hole left open for us in this country's non-secure system of ballot counting. Stalin said it best: It doesn't matter whose vote counts, it's who counts the votes.

DRIVING THROUGH THAT VOTING HOLE

The experts had been warning for more than a year about the built-in weaknesses of the new computer voting system. But, in their namby-pamby innocence, few Dems thought anybody actually would try to mess with that system; after all, there had been so much negative publicity about the new voting system from computer scientists and mainstream reporters -- about how vulnerable the system was to being hacked or manipulated by the company's technicians, leaving no trace of having been played with.

The Dems knew that our corporate supporters, who manufactured the machines, also owned the proprietary software that controlled both computer-machines and optical-scanner machines -- in short, that it was possible to call the shots in deciding the vote totals needed. But the Dems did nothing in Congress or anywhere else to plug up those holes and demand a more transparent system. Not only that, but they never even mentioned the possibility of such manipulation during the campaign. One could almost imagine they didn't care, or didn't want to win all that much.

But they sure are complaining now, vowing to get to the bottom of the 2004 vote-counting "scandal," and trying to ensure that the whole balloting system is made airtight for the next time out. Lots of luck, fellas, it ain't gonna happen.

The liberals just don't get it. We know what they don't: that most Americans don't really care all that much. They don't mind if we engage in some electoral hanky-panky, or if we practice deception on Congress, or even if we send their sons and daughters to war based on lies and faulty intel; they just want to move on in their lives, and they're scared (we made sure to give them "terrorism booster-shots" as often as possible). The world is a complex, dangerous place and they'll trust us to do what needs to be done. Simple answers, simple slogans, simple good people. They're "true believers" and card-carrying "patriots," and that's our hook for moving them along to the corral.

TAKING CARE OF THE BLUE PEOPLE

Of course, there's that other half of the country, those Blue-in-the-face wimps who see our Administration as illegitimate and will give us grief for the next four years. Let 'em turn up their noses in contempt, move to Canada, threaten us with nasty words on the internet -- fuck 'em, we have the power and they don't. We'll run right over them. (Note to myself: Figure out a way to rein in the internet; if the Chinese can block server access, why can't we?)

We'll even change the rules in the Congress, to eliminate the possibility of filibusters. There will be no extended anti-Bush debates while I'm in charge -- I mean while I'm "advising the President." Gotta be careful there. The Boy Genius needs to rein it in.

When Rehnquist goes, Scalia becomes Chief Justice (no Senate approval needed for an internal move), and we start packing the court with our people as more vacancies open up. The ACLU types can yell and scream all they want, claiming we have no mandate for such extreme actions. Maybe we don't really have a mandate, but we sure as hell have got the votes, and we'll alter the direction of that court for the next thirty or forty years. Bork you, Teddy! It's values, baby. (Meaning ours, of course. The other side doesn't get to have any.)

GIVING TREATS TO SPECIAL FRIENDS

This is so much fun! Not just having all the reins of power in our hands -- the Congress, the White House, the Courts, the mass-media (couldn't have done it without the "fair and balanced" reporting -- heh heh -- of Fox News, and Rush and the cable TV guys) -- but it's also getting to watch the liberals writhing in agony over their powerlessness. Now I know how those U.S. guards felt at Abu Ghraib as they humiliated their prisoners. Exquisite!

Wait until they see how we get Patriot Act II provisions passed and move on to Patriot III -- maybe some camps in the Mohave Desert for unpatriotic resisters -- and who our various appointments are going to be -- not just on the judicial bench, but all over the place. We have a lot of friends to thank: maybe a position for John O'Neill over at the VA, get Glenda Hood into Congress, Judith Miller on the Defense Policy Board, make sure Ken Blackwell gets the Ohio governor's chair, Wally O'Dell a giant ambassadorship, and I guess we'll have to give John McCain a big bone at Defense. For the likes of Colin Powell, Tony Zinni, Joe Wilson, Paul O'Neill, Hans Blix and David Kay: a colonoscopy performed with a weed-wacker.

And we have a lot of lollipops to pass out to our information-control friends at Fox News, CNN, the cable pundits -- they made sure to keep our talking points always in mind, and they handled those disastrous debates, and the inevitable dumb remarks by our candidate, with smooth efficiency. The Dems, bless their archaic hearts, still think newspapers (and newspaper endorsements) are all that's important; wake up and smell the mass-media coffee, fellas. We control the roasting of the beans!

KERRY MELTED AWAY SO EASILY

Must say I was a bit surprised that Kerry said uncle so quickly; this was the guy who raked Bush for "rushing to war" and now Kerry was "rushing from war." It didn't take much arm-twisting to get Kerry to concede. We got him to focus on the numbers in Ohio, and he saw that he couldn't do it. He was so exhausted and self-involved, he didn't even think beyond his own campaign by demanding recounts in the various key states or raising issues of fraud. Of course, we alluded to what would happen to him if he tried -- that might have sharpened his desire to get back in line.

He wasn't a bad campaigner; it's just that there was no way we were going to allow anybody to keep us from four more years. If he brought in 5 million young voters for Kerry, we would bring in even more than that from the fundie churches. If he brought in lawyers, we brought in lawyers -- and software technicians. No traces, just circumstantial evidence. We're home free.

So, since we don't have to worry about getting elected anymore, we can let the neo-cons out of their cages, and ratchet up our agenda. We'll make a feint to the Dems in the name of "bipartisanship," to show how "reasonable" we are, but it's full steam ahead and they'd better jump on board -- or get thrown overboard. We don't need them.

And we don't need any old European allies or United Nations ditherers either. Crush the Iraq rebellion, install a "legitimately-elected" government in Iraq after the January balloting -- which will be a bit difficult to pull off, since we may not be able to hold the election in about a quarter-to-half of the country. Then we proceed with our campaign of using Iraq as a warning to other Arab leaders in the Middle East. If this is what you want to happen to you and your country, go ahead and resist our power. Shock & Awe concentrates the mind wonderfully.

BEWARE OF THE ARROGANCE MONSTER

But we have learned that reality sometimes can up and bite us -- surprised, really, that the American voters didn't make us pay any penalty for the egregious botch we've made of Iraq -- so we have to be a bit less in-your-face in the Middle East, at least for awhile. Now that Arafat is no longer in the equation, maybe we can actually make some progress in calming down the situation there, so that we can continue to unfold our program of "benevolent hegemony" and our effective control of the oil.

And we have to always remember the Nixon example. In '72, President Nixon won a huge mandate (a real one), and was forced to resign two years later. He got heady with his victory, and believed he was untouchable.

Many of us in the Bush White House harbor similar beliefs -- especially given the political invincibility provided by the election results -- and want to move in fast-and-furious fashion to enact our major agenda items in the first year. I do, too, but I'm aware of the unseen dangers lurking out there -- especially with an angry, resentful Dem minority, just waiting to pounce on us, and maybe a few moderate Republicans thinking about doing a Jeffords and joining the Dem side. So I hope we can keep the arrogance factor down to a respectable level.

But, damn I'm good. I love this sweet taste in my mouth. I even like making the rounds of the Sunday TV talk shows, and getting my photo on the magazine covers.

But I don't like razor-thin victories. It's time to crush and destroy the Democrat opposition, grind them into the ground, drive a stake through their hearts, make sure they never rise again to oppose us. Whoa! Down, boy!

Bernard Weiner, playwright and poet, also has peeked into the diaries of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Ashcroft, Kenneth Lay, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and others ( www.crisispapers.org/weinerpubs.htm ). A Ph.D. in government and international relations, he is co-editor of The Crisis Papers ( www.crisispapers.org).

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