Bored with Bush

Probably the only thing sadder than the spectacle of Tweety, Chuck Todd, and MSNBC's Softball going all orgy on the Southern Republican Leadership Conference's 2008 straw poll this weekend is me writing another post on the subject.

But as the Daily Kos and Atrios have noticed, even for Tweety, his enthusiasm for this weekend's faux show--with 40% of the "delegates" from Tennessee, and with the majority leader's having bussed in a load of "supporters", this was designed as a Frist! coronation, his last apparently given that his speech bombed--seems a bit too neurotic given the fact that WE HAVEN'T EVEN REACHED THE 2006 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS YET.

What could be the cause for such a fixation, so early?

I suppose the best explanation lies in the hang-over Tweety and the boys are experiencing as the Bush presidency has pretty much collapsed three years before the finish line, its Rovian faux heroism and machoism all spent up, leaving its male fans scrounging in their pockets, wondering where all the money went, like an onleave soldier's monthly pay ravished in the pit of Los Angeles's Tropicana female oil-wrestling strip joint. But now that the auctioned money has been spent, the girls aren't around, and the club has just closed for the night, the boys suddenly realize they've been had. The party's over.

Their Bush infatuation started with the bullhorn moment at Ground Zero and crescendoed with the Top Gun attired, jet-landing on the air-craft carrier. The drunken binge inspired by Rove's minions has left the president's media admirers in a sad stupor, feeling left behind at the alter, alone on the prom night while somewhere, somebody else is getting over.

As Wolcott noted a while back in discussing another Bush groupie suckered in by the Shock and Awe Iraq campaign--Don Imus--the president's former boosters are bored now. The fun with Iraq has long worn off, the president's once shining gloss given a rough sanding.

2006? Well, the GOP already controls both chambers so this fall's elections don't promise to give Tweety's gang anything to get excited about.

But the 2008 race offers the potential for the boys to become infatuated with someone else, to be born again if you will, dreaming of when a new hero can take over; Heck, they're ready to annoint someone already so they can start with the new story-line. Tweety already has his eyes on the new dish in class--John McCain--and breathlessly announced on the 9pm special tonight that coming up he had an "exclusive" interview with the Senator, who finished at the bottom of the pack and who if you watch any TV "news" programs at all would have an impossible time missing, he's on so much. An "exclusive" interview with McCain? Is this what the media has come to?

Meanwhile, after a month of having the UAE ports deal lead on every cable outlet, and just when the Dubai company's withdrawal was thought to give the president some breathing room, his former top domestic policy advisor, who left the WH last month "to spend more time with his family" has been arrested for fraud and theft in Montgomery County, MD, accused of stealing from local Target stores.

You can't make this stuff up.