If you don’t want to do the time, don’t commit the crimes. Every street tough understands this basic wisdom. And Karl Rove understands it, too. But, they have committed the crimes. Oodles of them. And that makes them extremely dangerous. They cannot afford to lose either house of congress, and yet, they appear poised to lose at least one of them. The Democrats are playing down the prospects of impeachment, but everyone knows that impeachment will become a strong possibility once John Conyers starts holding hearings in the Judiciairy Committee. And it won’t be some kind of farce like the Clinton impeachment process. This time, it will be a lot more like Watergate. Once the testimony starts flowing, or the stonewalling becomes too egregious, even the Republicans will be forced to concede the degree of Bush’s criminality. Jim Rutenberg decribes the panic in a piece for the New York Times:











To anyone who doubts the stakes for the White House in this year’s midterm Congressional elections, consider that Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the Democrat who would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee if his party recaptured the House, has called for an inquiry into the possible impeachment of President Bush over the war in Iraq.

Or listen to Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who would run the Senate Judiciary Committee if the Democrats took the Senate. Mr. Leahy vowed in a recent interview to subpoena top administration officials, if he got the chance, to answer more questions about their secret eavesdropping program and what he considers faulty prewar intelligence.

The prospect of the administration spending its last two years being grilled by angry Democrats under the heat of partisan spotlights has added urgency to the efforts by Karl Rove and Mr. Bush’s political team to hang on to the Republican majorities in Congress.

The prospect of the Republicans getting grilled over their crimes and incompetence is so unpleasant to contemplate that we can be sure that the Republicans will consider virtually anything to prevent it from happening. Even if they think they can stave off an impeachment, they have Bush’s legacy to think about. So, when Rove says the following, we have to take him very seriously.

Mr. Rove said he was not worried. “We won’t see how that plays out because they’re not going to win,” he said.

Is he talking tough, or does he know something we don’t? Consider for a moment the cards in Rove’s hand (and I don’t mean the ability to rig elections or issue phony terror warnings).

In meetings at the White House, aboard Air Force One and in candidates’ home states, Mr. Rove is trying to rally Republicans to stand by the president and his agenda.

He has focused in particular on uniting them behind the administration’s proposals to overhaul immigration, which include guest worker provisions that conservatives despise; the Iraq war, which has driven Mr. Bush’s poll numbers sharply downward; and the Medicare prescription drug program, which the administration says will cost $872 billion from 2006 to 2014 and which Mr. Bush backed enthusiastically despite complaints from conservatives that it was a vast expansion of the social welfare state.

In other words, Rove has nada. His reelection message is even more unpopular with Republicans than it is with Democrats. This will lead him to make a familiar argument.

They are refining state “victory programs” to identify potentially friendly voters who can be expected to receive messages about how the Democrats are ill prepared to fight terrorism or will undo tax cuts the president wants to make permanent.

None of this is sufficient to get the job done. The Republicans are going to lose and lose very badly unless something truly horrible happens that unites the country, or they somehow rig the vote. I’m not sure rigging the vote is even an option this year. The Presidential election came down to the results in two states, Ohio and Florida, where the polling was close and the election machinery was firmly in the hands of Bush loyalists. The Congressional elections are taking place in every district in the country. Moreover, Rove is likely to be indicted anyday, and that will only make the Republican efforts more daunting. No, only another 9/11 type attack has any prospect of preventing a total collapse of this administration. And I’m not the only one saying this. Here’s Sean Wilentz in Rolling Stone:

George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario.

So true, but Karl Rove says they are not going to lose either house. Bluster? I hope so. I hate living in a country where I have to worry that my government is willing to kill American civilians and frame terrorists for it in order to prevent basic oversight of their crimes. But that is the world we are living in. Paranoid? Maybe. But, not naive.