Surprise!!!

Much has been made of Karl Rove’s upcoming “October Surprise,” but who needs one now that all the media focus has been drawn to the Congressional Page scandal and one pervert who’s now in rehab? The media has all but forgotten Woodward’s latest book and its scathing indictment of the Bush administration’s pre-9/11 behavior; the horrendous situation in Iraq as detailed by the National Intelligence Estimate report; the gutting of the Constitution and our new torture policy; and the tanking middle class economy.

The inevitable spin will grind into gear once more, along the lines of “hate the sin but love the sinner” and the long-running cover-up of the pervert’s behavior will gather the theme of “well they didn’t really understand the scope of his behavior” so run along, it’s been taken care of now. Business as usual.

The timing could not have been more perfect: wait until the last moment before the recess so that his Republican vote can be utilized until the end, and then, more than five ten years after the first evidence of his misbehavior, have him resign in disgrace. All evidence points to this being made a deliberate strategy — the leadership knew the story would come out, so why not get some mileage out of it when it did?

Meanwhile, into the memory hole will go all the vastly more substantive reasons for voting this administration out on a rail. Very elegant, Mr. Rove. That additional teens were victimized in the meanwhile, well they’re just “fungible” assets, as Rumsfeld likes to say about our troops.