Is Karl Rove on the way out?

One can only hope and pray. In the old days, a lot of puppet kings and queens had a secret compartment behind their thrones, where their advisors fed them what to say or do -- the real power behind the throne.

Similarly, through dirty tricks and outright manipulation of the media as well as the people, it's been Karl Rove who has been the real POTUS over the last few years, not Dubya. So what could possibly put Rove in such a huff? Well, last week's gains by the Democrats to be sure. When trendlines as early as the start of the year indicated the GOP might lose Congress, Rove still bet on his GOTV (get out the vote) machine. As he infamously smirked, "You're entitled to your numbers. I'm entitled to the numbers." Guess he didn't realize that it's taken a long time but the donkey finally figured out how to target voters who actually get out and vote rather than merely say they are going to vote.

The big problem, however, is that Bush may actually be sincere about wanting to work with the Democrats. To Rove and others now out of the picture -- Delay, Santorum, and the like -- to be a Democrat is to be exactly the same as the anti-Christ. To even speak to one is taking the mark of the beast. But the people have actually spoken. Despite all the attempts to jam voter fraud hotlines, rig the smart cards that count the vote at the non-paper trail voting screens and otherwise predetermine the outcome of the election -- what Watergate co-conspirator Donald Segretti once famously called "ratfucking" in reference to his and others' attempts to undermine the credibility of Edmund Muskie to ensure the"weenie" candidate, George McGovern, ran against Nixon in 1972 -- the progressives actually prevailed.

And like Bush who got rebuked last week, Nixon bears a lot of the blame for the series of events that led to his resignation; but at times he too was manipulated a lot by puppet strings pulled by people with even less scruples than he. Perhaps Bush sees some hope of salvaging some of his reputation -- and there would be little better way to demonstrate that than to sack Rove.

The issue isn't that Rove feels like he feels left out of the White House, the one that he built over the last six years; but rather he's no longer welcome on lobbyists' row, K Street, either. And the king of lobbyists, Jack Abramoff who's now serving time for corruption, may be about to fink Rove and others. So Rove just might want to think carefully about it ... if he leaves the executive or gets fired from it, he also loses what limited immunity from prosecution he has left.

What goes around comes around.

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