If there is one thing that the Republicans will learn from the Plame investigation, it’s that they can’t talk to “normal” reporters or they could get caught. They need die-hard, true believer, amoral, press release spigots to disseminate their talking points to.
Like Jeff Gannon, who continues to spout his lies about the Plame investigation.
If Rove doesn’t go down & the entire WH doesn’t take a serious, and I mean Senate investigations serious, hit for this endangerment of national security, then they will get smarter about how they use their propaganda tools. There will be more “interns” sent into major newsrooms (basically ditto heads who will be doing the research for the “real” reporters); more “independent” news outlets will sprout up (i.e. Talon News, but better disguised) & their reporters will gain remarkable access to the corridors of power, shutting out the non-conformist news outlets from the “scoop”; and they’ll call in their favors at GE, Fox & Clear Channel to amp up the noise.
Next time the leaks will only go to Safire, Novak, the Washington Times & Fox News. And perhaps Drudge. They will never talk. Even if it means going to jail (like that would ever happen to them… ah, hello, what the hell is Novak still doing polluting the airwaves??). They would be the perfect soldiers for the assault on democracy. Rove got cocky and drunk with his own power and screwed up by going too broad and too much into people who are actually journalists. He’s a sharp guy, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
And don’t bother to say “but he would resign or be fired”. Who cares? Seriously. You think that just because he isn’t in the Oval Office he wouldn’t still be a major player? He’s too valuable to them. They would never let him go. Unless he went to jail of course.
These guys have studied at the feet of the master propagandists and if they do learn from their mistakes we are all in big fucking trouble. Really the only thing that would stand in their way would be the Internet, Air America, Newsweek & CBS (oh and the rest of the world, but that’s not a consideration for these guys, or this day).
So what do we do? We keep pushing. We keep talking about & using the frames of: national security & patriotism & time of war & betrayed state secrets & treasonous & corrupt administration & lies. Keep bringing it back to the basics. Don’t even bother arguing specific details IMO, the reporters (& prosecutor) can take care of that… just keep bringing it back to where we want them to focus their attention… On the President’s Brain… his ‘go-to-guy’ who has been with him since the beginning. The guy who leaked classified information concerning a covert WMD expert working on Iraq, the country the Bush Admin said was planning to nuke American cities (paraphrasing), during a time of war.
Let’s make sure they don’t get away with it, m’kay?
🙂
Update [2005-7-12 20:32:34 by spiderleaf]: We are underestimating Rove if we believe that he did not know Valerie’s status IMO (refering to BooMan’s Devil’s Advocate post – I posted a comment there, but me being me, I had to add it here too ;).
Rove is a shrewd guy. He didn’t get to where he is now without understanding angles and leverage. I have no doubt that he built a dossier and planned his “angle” right about the time Wilson first got back from Africa. He didn’t know Wilson, he wouldn’t have trusted him. He needed something he could discredit or blackmail him with in case he disobeyed the marching orders… so he did some digging into his background (he most likely has sources all over the place feeding him info — including in the CIA or Pentagon) & found Valerie. But he didn’t think the whole scenario through (as I pointed out above, let alone the whole blowing of a covert operative’s cover) & we have arrived at this point.
But no way this was something he decided to do on the spur of the moment. He had his attack planned & launched it within days of Wilson’s article.
I just feel like some freakin’ rabbit is going to appear from Karl’s ass and everything will go back to “normal”… i.e. Orwell…
Also, cross posted at dkos
Yeah, me too — all of the gleeful optimism around on the internets is amking me nervous too … waaay too many times, I have thought, oh, THIS is IT!!
I share your cautious optimism….BTW, did you notice that there are ZERO comments on “Jeff Gannon”‘s blog? Do you think he just deletes them all? lol
oops, 1 on the Plame story….I wonder if he’ll asnwer that question?
Yeah, I love the passion and focus, but the “we’ve got him” crys are ringing hollow… we frankly don’t know what Fitzgerald has (other than the Cooper email), he may have enough to indict or he may not. We just don’t know yet.
And we don’t know what Novak told the GJ… too many “ifs” for me to feel comfortable yet. We need to keep up the pressure but be smart & cautious about it.
lol… yeah, I’m sure he does delete them 🙂
Over and over we thought they were done and then they came back for more and more villainy.
Bite ’em hard! You got me all pumped up again, thx spider.
Republicans are unfit to govern. Throw them all out next year! We have to talk to everyone around us! Rinse & Repeat, Rinse and Repeat
Glad to have been of service! Yeah, these guys know no bounds… we gotta keep at them… they won’t go down without a fight, that’s for sure, but I’m just warming up… they won’t know what hit ’em if we can get more of the masses riled up too… 😉
It’s important to remember this is just one small part a much much bigger conspiracy by this administration. Someone in the WH outed Valerie Plame. They’re busy right now carefully parsing words about what Rove did or did not say to Cooper and others, and we’re salivating about whether Fitz can catch him in a lie and bring an indictment.
Keep in mind, Plame was outed to discredit hubbie Wilson who called bullshit on the yellow cake in Niger story, a bigger lie by this administration, complete with forged documents, to support an even bigger lie that Saddam had or was developing nukes, which was just a part of an even bigger lie that Saddam was an imminent threat to his neighbors and even the west coast of the US. Secret drones, maybe rockets that could be launched in 45 minutes. And on and on and on, so we gotta invade Iraq before there’s a mushroom cloud in San Franciso.
The Plame affair may be the biggest story in town right now, but it’s just a part of the real story. I don’t much care whether Karl Rove gets frog marched or not. Rove is just one player in this gig, and not nearly the most important one. I want the whole putrid mess to be dragged out in the light of day. I want to American people and the world to see the full catastrophe this administration has perpetrated on us all.
I agree completely. But still think it’s important to start somewhere… and if that somewhere is Bush’s “right hand man” then that’s as good a place as any… 🙂
I really do care whether Rove does the perp walk or not. Quite aside from the part he may have played in the Plame affair, Rove is responsible more than anyone else for inflicting George W. Bush on the world. His responsibility for all that has happened since, including the thousands of senseless deaths in Iraq, is as great as anyone’s. It’s just that I don’t want us to get so focused on getting somebody for outing Plame that we forget the bigger picture.
And I do think your original diary makes a crucial point that we ignore at our peril. If they can spin their way out of this one, I fear for the future of our nation and the world.
It’s in full swing already. I just listened to the most in your face, over the top, bald face lying that I’ve heard in a long time. Newt Gingrich was just on the Today Show and ran through the new republican talking points like the pro that he is. I don’t have time right now to put it all here, but basically it was all about Plame being the one who authorized Wilson’s trip to Niger, Wilson lying about what he found, and Rove having no idea Plame was covert. Blah, blah, blah. To someone ignorant of the facts, it would probably sound accurate. Especially anyone who is predisposed to believing republicans.
So…here we go. The battle for the support of those in the middle has begun. Their support is needed to bring down Rove, and Bush too. Maybe there’s a transcript somewhere. It was amazing to listen to. Btw, I’m not in the habit of watching the Today Show. My wife was watching, just so we’re all clear on that :O)
That was the last straw for me. What pissed me off is Katie Couric let Newt spew this shit without a single word on the lies. Matt-f’ing-Lauer challenged Tom Cruise more than this!
I wrote NBC (and also MSNBC for Matthew’s crap coverage) and will keep hammering away. There is absolutely no excuse for the media to run this sort of propaganda. Take a stand, just say no to horse shit!
Letting someone like Katie “interview” someone like Gingrich is merely giving the RNC an open mike on national TV for several minutes. She had no idea what to say, no good questions to ask him, and he walked all over her while he hit every talking point on his Little List of Lies and Spins. And of course, nobody was invited to counterbalance and rebut that big slimy fatassed salamander.
That kind of crap that passes for “journalism” just makes me wanna puke! Good for you to have written some letters of outrage–I should do that after I calm down a bit.
and here’s why:
No matter the spin, each and every R spokesperson is saying that Karl Rove revealed the identity of a CIA person. Over and over again.
The spin will reach the R faithful, as it always does, but the average American is getting the message that a guy who works for the President revealed the identity of a CIA agent, inevitably referred to as “covert” or other synonyms, which is a Very Bad Thing.
Remember, the Rwingnuts’ success in no small part relied on preaching to the choir under the national media radar while presenting a different face above that radar. This is the second time they’ve lost control — the first was the Theresa Schiavo case and look at the blowback on that one!