The crooks and liars' (GOP) perspective on the election:

[ProSense]

From Talking Points:

YOU GET THE sense from the GOP that in its analysis of the election results the congressional seats lost due to Republican ties to public corruption shouldn't really count. Sort of like losing the game not because you got beat but because the refs made a bad call.

I think most people would view bribery, influence peddling, and sexually predatory congressmen as substantive problems, not mere technicalities. Maybe that's just me.

For its part, the White House would like to portray the corruption issue as a congressional problem. In his press conference, the President said, "People want their Congress -- congressmen to be honest and ethical." (That comment came just after the point in the press conference where he acknowledged deliberately misleading reporters the week before when he said he intended to keep Don Rumsfeld on after the election.)

For his part, Karl Rove was surprised by the significance of corruption in the election outcome:

"The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected," Rove tells TIME. "Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass."

One can forgive Rove his surprise. He was too close to the problem to see it for what it was. Funny how he describes it now like a detached observer of the passing scene, with the perspective of a political scientist. Let's take this apart, starting with Rove's old buddy Jack Abramoff.

more...

[Jackpine Radical]

1. "Distaste ... for all things Washington?"

How 'bout "distaste ... for all things Republican?"

[Warren Stupidity]

2. As I said elsewhere about this

First Rove takes Iraq right off the table. Iraq who? Not a factor according to this spin.

Then, after 12 years of the K Street Project which shut the Democratic Party almost completely out of the beltway gravy train, Rove would like to have us believe that this is a general bipartisan 'Washington' problem, and not somehow specific to the Republican Party.

Well of course he wants to take Iraq off the table despite the simple fact that it was the #1 issue on the list of reasons why people were voting and voting against Republicans, and he'd like to make the massive corruption of the Republican Party a bipartisan issue, as the corruption was #2 on that same voter list. They have been trying to make corruption bipartisan ever since the Abramoff scandal surfaced. They have to as the corruption endemic to the corporate wing of the Republican Party could be the final nail in the coffin of their uncomfortable coalition.

The only question is will the Bullshit Media System work for them one more time to defuse the crisis that the election has confronted them with?

[ljm2002]

3. Remember what Press Secretary Snow said...

...regarding a message from the electorate: something to the effect "no, it wasn't a message about the Iraq war, remember that 10 seats were lost due to corruption issues" -- AS IF that was no big thing.

These people are masters of spin. They actually think they can spin 10 seats lost due to corruption, as a Good Thing in that it dilutes (in their tiny minds) the message about the Iraq invasion and occupation -- a message that the electorate clearly wanted delivered, and which has not surprisingly fallen on deaf ears.