Pretzel Logic

Andrew Sullivan has a column about how, in his view, Karl Rove has failed in the long run.

...just as Rove has become entangled in petty scandal, he has bungled the bigger strategy as well. Six years into the Bush presidency Rove’s fantasy of a permanent Republican majority is fast becoming a B-movie of a broken political movement.

It's worth reading, with one big but: It lets Bush off too easily. Sullivan seems to think that all the spin, all the objectively-unhinged behavior, all the lies and basically this whole nightmare called the Bush administration can be blamed on Rove:

Rove advised a moderate, congenial and compassionate Republican, elected with a minority of the popular vote, to forget about retaining the political centre. Rove believed that appealing to moderates was a fool’s game when there were millions of alienated evangelical voters waiting to be tapped.

So Bush cut taxes, turned on the spending spigot and stuck to a strictly religious line on social policy: no new federal embryonic stem cell research, judicial appointments designed to reverse the Roe vs Wade case that established women’s right to abortion, a constitutional amendment to ban civil recognition of gay couples and a clumsy attempt to play politics with Terri Schiavo, a woman in Florida in a permanent vegetative state.

Look, Karl Rove is obviously a truth-twisting piece of toxic trash who repulses me even more than anime. But the notion that, if not for him, George W. Bush would have been "moderate, congenial and compassionate" comes from someone who swallowed the Bush line a long time ago. Someone who still hasn't spit it back up, no matter how rancid it turned out to be.

Bush did all those thing. Not Rove. George W. Bush. He is without mercy or feeling.

But, as always...this is pure speculation and I admit that...I continue to be convinced that all of Andrew Sullivan's opinions on Bush really come from only one place: He's haunted by the fact that he's a gay man who masochistically supported Bush and twisted himself into a pretzel trying to cling to the belief Bush thinks he's a human being.

And although he's made great strides in calling bullshit on all the spin, all the objectively-unhinged behavior, all the lies and basically this whole nightmare called the Bush administration...

I believe he still, deep down, wants to think that he could have a civil discussion with George W. Bush if they met across a table. They could have a couple of refreshing drinks, eat some snacks, and he could look into Bush's eyes. And he would see that there is really no cruelty, indifference or meanness in his heart.

It's really kind of sad, when you think about it.