December 25, 2005
Digby got there before me, so I can make this short.
Monitoring mosques and Muslim areas for radioactivity, whether illegally or not, is a kind of spying which most Americans will approve of. Besides everything else, radiation monitoring is less intrusive than clandestine burglaries, electronic eavesdropping, or monitoring phone conversions.
Digby believes that the "leak" of information about this particular activity was engineered by Karl Rove, and I think he's right. Of all the forms of illegal surveillance that there are, this is the least offensive, and the Rove team wants to make it the public face of the illegal NSA program .
Reasonable conservatives know that the real issues are quite different, but reasonable conservatives are not a significant voting bloc. The Bush-Rove team plans to win the battle for public opinion on this issue, and the Democratic Party's historical failure or refusal to capitalize on Republican outrages tells us that it is entirely possible that once the dust has settled, Bush will not have been hurt at all.
Posted by John Emerson at December 25, 2005 02:00 PM
Even a dollar helps a lot. THANKS!
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Comments
You are right. As long as Bush can continue to sweep the Rowe issue under the rug, the better off he is because the public has a short memory.
Posted by: James at December 25, 2005 06:57 PM
next comes the clever meme that paints the Dems in the corner
remember "Cut and Run"
this feels like Groundhog Day
Posted by: BadGimp ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.seeingtheforest.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 25, 2005 10:54 PM
If this was likely to be the end of the story, you'd be right and bush would be relatively unharmed. But soon we're going to start seeing lists of people who were monitored, and knowing republicans as we all do it's hard to believe they resisted the urge to monitor their political enemies. It's going to be tough convincing the American people that cindy Sheehan and John Kerry were off making dirty bombs in 2004.
Posted by: Anonymous at December 26, 2005 07:08 AM
If this was likely to be the end of the story, you'd be right and bush would be relatively unharmed. But soon we're going to start seeing lists of people who were monitored, and knowing republicans as we all do it's hard to believe they resisted the urge to monitor their political enemies. It's going to be tough convincing the American people that cindy Sheehan and John Kerry were off making dirty bombs in 2004.
Posted by: Soullite at December 26, 2005 07:08 AM
I just doubt the Democrats' ability to capitalize on this. Even on the Iraq War itself, the Democrats run the risk of being pre-empted by Republicans like Hagel. The media, likewise, are giving this a partisan, pro-Republican spin.
I'm adding the Media Matters link which fell out of this post when I first posted.
Posted by: John Emerson at December 26, 2005 07:37 AM
