A White House divided against itself…

November 4, 2005

The week since Scooter Libby resigned under criminal indictment has been an odd one at the White House, at least for those of us watching Bush staffers go at each other through the press.

The conflict, at this point, seems to be between Karl Rove vs. Scott McClellan. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Rove’s lies to McClellan about his role in the Plame scandal are causing trouble throughout the West Wing. The same article suggested that there are a growing number of White House discussions about Rove’s ouster.

Today, Rove’s side appears to have returned fire in the Moonie-owned Washington Times.

[White House Counselor Dan Bartlett] said the president is “not going to be forced by catcalls in Washington” to fire Mr. Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff. Nor is there an internal debate in the West Wing about whether Mr. Rove should be fired while the investigation continues.

“It’s not happening,” Mr. Bartlett told The Washington Times. “It would be deeply disrespectful of him personally and the investigation that is going on more broadly for us to be making presumptions about something we don’t know the outcome of.”

Wait, as far as the White House is concerned, it would be “disrespectful” to fire Rove? The White House is worried about Rove’s feelings?

The president said he’d fire anyone involved with the leak. Rove not only was involved with the leak, he lied to his colleagues, and even lied to the president directly. But Bush won’t fire him because it’d be “disrespectful of [Rove] personally.”

The mind reels.

Did he say it was also disrepectful to the investigation?? What the hell does that mean? Do these people not even care about what they say?

  • Rove probably has more files on people than any else has since J.Edgar Hoover did before he died. My guess is that Bush is scared shitless.

  • About time conservatives and their mouthpieces are feeling this pResident’s misplaced stubborness.

  • I don’t really understand the “McClellan is the victom” part of this saga. While it may be true, it seems to have been accepted with little evidence other than cues sent out from Scotty during some briefings or the bemoanings of anonymous “mid-level staffers”.

    The Libby indictment notes that Libby met with Arie Fleischer for lunch and told him about Plame the week before it hit the media. There was also a quickly scrubbed sentence in a WaPo article sugesting that on July 12th Fleischer was to be launching an attack on Wilson’s credibility. So it seems likely that Fleischer knew who was involved. I think it’s not very credible to assume that McClellan, Fleischer’s assistant at the time, was completely unaware of this scuttlebut.

    As I said, it may be true that McClellan was kept in the dark (the plausible deniability scenario), but I not sure why this is taken as the working assumption in such articles. I think it is just as likely that such stories are merely an attempt to foster some unwarrented credibility in Scotty’s direction.

  • Rove probably has more files on people than any else has since J.Edgar Hoover did before he died. My guess is that Bush is scared shitless.

    Wouldn’t it be neat if Rove had an epiphany and flipped?

    Can you imagine?

    It’d be like Hercules diverting those two rivers into the Augean stables.

    God knows we need that sort of house cleaning.

  • What he meant was “it would be disrespectful for me to reclaim the White House from its rightful owners – Rove who got us here and Cheney who runs the place. Without them, all I’ve got are DeLay and Frist to keep me safe and that’s not looking so good at the moment either.”

  • But…but…but Rove is the Godhead of the cult of Rove. There is no other who can be The Rove. The self-hating closet gays who permeate this administration adore the pursed lip, soft-skinned, shiny pink Rove, from Cheney with his beard of a wife and self-hating gay daughter, to Mehlman with his long-time male bride and love for anonymous trysts. Torture? Campaigns of personal savagery? Male-dominated culture in which no questioning is allowed? Sado-masochistic gay men know that the GOP is the party for them! Their professional success will be assured by being the most anti-gay, war-loving guy in the room. “Normal” camoflage is provided by a fancy suit, solid-color tie, and muscle car, the hallmarks of successful Men. The MSM protects these guys by refusing to disclose what it knows of their sexual proclivities–the same press that savaged Clinton for his sexuality! Historians of the 2050’s and beyond willwonder why America’s Chattering Class failed to notice how much this all looks like Hitler’s inner circle of sexual deviates with their secret trysts and phoney marriages.

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