While Canadian media is dutifully parroting US network speculation-masquerading-as-reporting on the resignation of Andrew Card, over at Ankle Biting Pundits, there’s a more logical explanation;
My sources tell me that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card’s resignation has almost nothing to do with a “staff shakeup,” as the AP has reported.
The “staff shakeup” meme plays into the MSM’s obsession with the president’s “slumping poll numbers” — which they all too gaily report — but does not really add up. Card served as a traditional CoS; an administrator, not a policy or political guy, and for all the shortcomings of this White House, staff administration has never really been one of them.
That was the part that didn’t pass the media smell test for me. Andrew Card is well known, but certainly not a name that pushes political buttons on a mass scale. How the departure of Card was supposed to influence poll numbers went conveniently unexplained.
Rather, I have been told by Washington insiders that Card is leaving to play a significant role in the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. This announcement will not be made for several months; perhaps not until after the 2006 election, but many of Card’s associates have already been working for Romney behind the scenes.
None of which matters much to me one way or the other – it’s just interesting to watch how far baseless commentary can travel through the media food chain under the guise of “news” reporting.
h/t Malkin
Look at Bush’d polling numbers …as they remain the same ( or continue to plummet) watch for more rats using any lame excuse to bail out on the coming regime collapse.
April 2006
A Bush Crack-Up?
We’ve been here before.
By: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
THANKS IN PART TO THE INTRUSIVE REPORTAGE of modern mass media, thanks in part to America’s preeminent role in world politics, the chronicle of the American presidency from the Kennedy administration to the present is a concatenation of cliffhangers. From the early 1960s the news from the White House has been news of one horripilation after another. There are the sensational stories that every leader occasions — war, economic setback, political upheaval — and there are the sensational stories that only a leader beset by a mass media could occasion — the president slept through a late-night aerial battle with Libyan jets, the president fell asleep during late-night phone sex with an intern, the vice president peppered a hunting companion with birdshot on a remote ranch and the White House did not report it promptly to “the networks.”
A horripilation that in terms of seriousness ranks about midway between war and the vice president’s hunting accident is the news report that the president has lost the support of his base. This particular news story is, for whatever reason, a hardy perennial during conservative presidencies. In this issue of AmSpec we may glean from Al Regnery’s publisher’s note and the pieces of William Rusher, Robert Novak, Angelo Codevilla, Stephen Moore, and Quin Hillyer that President George W. Bush is adrift from his conservative base. Reading through these manuscripts before forming my own opinion and interviewing other conservatives, I recalled that I had heard this song before. + more
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1605589/posts
The phrase du jour is the “troubled Bush administration.” Now there’s a good drinking game for you — down a shot of Tequila everytime you see or hear that phrase mentioned in the news.
There are supposedly scandals (did the press forget about the Clinton years), Bush is losing the war in Iraq, the French hate us, Hurricane Katrina was Bush’s fault, and according to Bill Clinton, Americans envy the British economy and social system. The economy is troubled even though it is arguably the strongest economy we’ve ever had, and Americans are pessimistic about the future.
Reading the mainstream media makes me want to go shoot myself.
Stingray: a blog for salty Christians
” . . . according to Bill Clinton . . .”
Oh, Stingray, thank you, I just remembered how people began bailing regularly on the Clinton Administration after about Feb ’97 – to get on with life after a lame-duck prez. Happens with every second-term administration.
This is one of the most no-there-there stories ever.