You have to concede that to him – he IS a smartass.
There is the planed drop in oil-/gas-prices which of course will fit Rove and his party. There is the superb voter turnout strategy and there is the self-absolution of this administration on torture. But even Balkin misses that last, most important, point.
The bill’s "terror" relation and its late introduction has the superficial
function, so far successfully, to frighten the Democrats in Congress to not
oppose it. They could be called weak on the t-word. In Republican voter
strategy minds, this meens week on terror, but in any clear liberal mind is simply weak on opposing torture and basic values.
But terror/torture is not the essence of this. Rove does not care if his boss will be superficially (unitary executive?) restricted to order eternal internment and torture of anybody materially supporting hostilities against official U.S. policy, i.e. us.
Cheney will do whatever he gets away with anyway. Rove does not care about reason or habeas corpus. He cares about winning elections – and that is what he will do.
To him, this bill is an insurance policy. If the Democrats, through some curious circumstances, would
win a majority in a part of Congress, their first thought would be to find a line for legal steps probably leading to an impeachment investigation of Bush. That would be a catastrophy to the Republican case worse than seen during and after the Nixon impeachment.
So, to Rove, this is about the survival of his party.
Currently, there are probably no people in secret CIA prisons. There is no immediate need to torture anybody (there could, to me, never be a need at all). But the real intent
of the rush to this bill is to put into law an indemnification of prior deeds.
This may be the very last chance for the Rove administration to do such dike building against the probably coming flood of hearings.
This bill would effectively pardon any CIA agent, any of his/hers superiors and, most importantly Cheney, for ordering their deeds.
That, and only that, is what this really is about.
The Democrats seem to fail to see how their hands may be bound in future by supporting this legislation.
They also fail to see how their potential voters see this as cowardice against a basic assassination of their values, as a clear sign not to vote for them, i.e. not to vote at all.
So Rove, smartass he is, wins.
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An additional late thought on this: If this legislation fails, there is a real, REAL "1%" danger for Cheney to see the ICC from the dock side. To avert that, an attack on Iran may be worthwhile – even before this election.
That could be a reason to support its passing, but that is not what the Dems are about.