Posted by
Gamecock on Sunday, November 12, 2006 6:27:12 PM
I am wholly unconvinced that Rumsfeld's resignation on any particular date in the past would have helped the GOP keep their majorities or that the media spin on why his resignation occurred when it occurred has any basis in reality.
This blog entry originally posted on Redstate and was inspired by pagar's endorsement just after a chickenhead explosion and just before this rooster concluded it was owed to the RS and TH public. It is submitted as a possible alternative explanation, not as a refutation of the other thoughtful surmises on Redstate or Townhall such as Dan McLaughlin's.
FTR, I am a great admirer of Rumsfeld and think that thanks to his strategies and leadership, never have our enemies been so decimated, our security so enhanced, so many living in tyranny been liberated in so short a time and at so low a cost by any military in history. Rumsfeld and Bush are known in liberated Afghanistan and Iraq by the vast majority of the gratefully liberated (most of whom have been blackballed from MSM appearances) as "The Liberators," as the history of the Muslim and Arab worlds will also remember them long after Pinch is pinched with death taxes.
I am wholly unconvinced that Rumsfeld's resignation on any particular date in the past would have helped the GOP keep their majorities or that the media spin on why his resignation occurred when it occurred has any basis in reality.
I suspect that Rummy, soon to be the longest serving DOD in history, has wanted to leave the post for the normal reasons his predecessors did for quite sometime, but that he has stayed in order to make sure that our enemies not be emboldened that his resignation is a sign the President is losing the will to fight and that the Dems would gain power. Once the Dems gained power, the goal of thwarting the Dems alliance with America's enemies was unachievable. Resigning right away limits the negative press by being in the same cycle as the Dem wins.
I am confident that had Rummy resigned during the campaign that it would have hurt the GOP more. Bush and the GOP have failed utterly in selling a most sell able war. That is the major reason they lost power. Well, not really. The main reason is the YEAR SIX phenomenon of built up grievances. The problem is that the conservative movement is still relatively young, and so we don't have the built up large majorities like the Dems had over their 40years. The GOP will re-gain the majority. The Dem party will make sure of that.
I also suspect that most of the work in Iraq requiring over 100,000 troops is largely done but that Bush's main goal is to make sure that when they begin with withdrawal it not be seen as a defeat like the Dems have tried to ensure. I think the Baker Commission will be the cover. It will cite the sterling achievements. The Dems cynical timetable ala Murtha actually coincided with the Bush's plans all along. But the Dems goal is that America be humiliated in the world.
See also Fred Barnes' "There's Still Life in that Lame Duck":
excerpt:
"With Rumsfeld's resignation, Bush demonstrated his willingness to make major concessions. Rather than change the strategy in Iraq, he changed the strategist. This is not the first step in a disguised retreat from Iraq, Bush aides insist, nor does it represent a turnover of national security policy to the "realists," as opposed to an idealist like Bush, who ran foreign affairs under Bush's father. The president told Rumsfeld's successor, Bob Gates, the goal is still to create a stable democratic Iraq that can defend itself--in other words, victory."
read the whole thing
And read Bush's comments on the war in his pre-election interview with conservatives in the Oval Office and I think we should conclude that Bush will never stop defending us and will not betray our purple-fingered allies in Iraq nor our troops.
How many times have we worried that Bush would waver and weaken on the war due to his silence or media spin and speculation? Yet he has never wavered. Never.
And The Decider won't ever quit before Inauguration Day, 2009.
www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan