Article: Rove Knows That Voters Have Short Memories

By Dave Johnson, Seeing the Forest

In 2006 people voted against Republicans, not for Democrats. Never forget this. The 2006 election taught Republicans that people vote against headlines about corruption and war. Republicans were being investigated and indicted for corruption so people voted against them. So they are taking steps to change the playing field for 2008. This is what the Justice Department scandal is about. The prosecutors who did "play ball" -- drop investigations into Republican corruption and investigate "administration priorities" -- were allowed to stay and the ones who did their jobs were fired. If the Republicans have their way with this -- and that means if ANY of the 93 current prosecutors stay in that job -- the public will be reading about dozens and dozens of Democrats being investigated and indicted for corruption even though they are completely innocent, while corrupt Republicans will be given a free ride to continue to raid the Treasury (while of course giving a "finders fee" to The Party.) And if this is what is happening in 2008 the public will vote against Democrats. It's as simple as that. The only way to stop this is to replace all 93 Bush prosecutors with honest people, and clean out the entire Justice Department. Meanwhile, the supporting infrastructure that surrounds the Democratic Party -- unfunded blogs and poorly-funded progressive organizations and very few poorly-funded think tanks -- is still failing to reach out to the general public with reasons to vote for Democrats.