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Brooklyn Broadside:
Is Dubai Incident One Of Karl Rove’s Ploys?
by Dennis Holt (Holt@brooklyneagle.net)
published online 03-11-2006


By Dennis Holt
BROOKLYN — Karl Rove, the man behind the curtain, who when he comes out looks like the guy who owned the corner drugstore when there were such things, is smiling these days. His most fiendishly clever plot seems to be working, and he’s hatched many a devilish trick: Just ask former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia and current Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
A big problem, the worst of his career, began to simmer last December. President Bush had launched an illegal wiretapping process, violating laws of Congress and the Constitution, and worse, he admitted it.

Rove began to get calls from thinking Republicans, mainly those up for election this fall, expressing somber concern of what might happen. This was serious business, or could be, worse than Katrina, worse even than Iraq. Something had to be done.

Well, thanks to the maestro, something is being done, and the fruits began to be realized on Wednesday, March 8. The heart of the slight of hand is that the Dubai episode is a fake, a diversion of such cleverness, with so few, so very few, in on it, that it was bound to work.

How do I, of all people, know? Well, as Mr. Rumsfeld once said, sometimes stuff happens.

What has taken place publicly in the last few days? Republicans in the House, by enormous margins, said the Dubai port mess cannot happen. In simple words, “There is no way that my Democratic opponent in November is going to accuse me of being soft on terrorism — that’s our issue.”

Meanwhile, the real potential ticking bomb — the presence of an impeachment process — is being defused by Republicans in the Senate. Every Republican, even those running for dogcatcher, know that an impeachment process could be devastating. It could even guarantee a Democratic victory in 2008. One Richard Nixon in a lifetime is enough.

The Republican ploy in the Senate on impeachment gives cover to almost everyone. It looks good, even if it doesn’t really mean anything in the real world. But in the political world, it is a beaut.

So, in both cases, Republicans are still the ones to trust on the war on terrorism … “Our ports will be run by people like us wearing white shirts and clean shaven, and meanwhile our President is still doing everything he can to keep us safe here at home.

“Maybe our spooks didn’t understand what they heard before 9/11, but not anymore. Let’s not screw up again, no quarter given.”

The first dictum of Karl Rove about the 2006 elections will take place: Regardless of what’s happening in Iraq, American troops will be coming home in sufficient numbers before November.

(About Dubai: is it at all possible that these high-level government types, representing almost the entire federal government, could possibly conduct the Dubai port business, and no one else know about it? Of course not — not even in this government!).

When all the smoke clears on this, the core elements that Republicans must have to avoid a devastating defeat will be more or less in place.

Troops will be coming home, our ports will be safe, the good people will be listening to the bad people, and the Democrats, by all their endless sniping, are proving they can’t be trusted with the tough issues. And if they have to use it, Rove already has in the campaign can a blistering program on fighting illegal immigration — don’t forget that winner.


© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006