The Supra-Scandal?

TPM Muckraker:

A glimpse of the supra-scandal?

The Washington Post's front page story today is about a meeting in January between the head of the General Services Administration, Lurita Doan, top agency officials, and Scott Jennings, Karl Rove's deputy. The topic: how the agency could help "our candidates."

The GSA is the government's landlord and heads up nearly $60 billion per year in government contracts. The meeting was about how to turn that buying power to Republican advantage.

And one TPM reader writes in:

One of the puzzling aspects of the US Attorney purge is that it wasn't completed until after the 2006 elections. So far, most allegations have focused on the notion that these US Attorneys failed to do enough to help Republican candidates win in 2006, by failing to investigate enough Democrats or to pursue scurillous allegations of voter fraud. But it's looking more and more like what happened here has more to do with 2008 than with 2006. Only two USAs were asked to step down before the elections: Cummins, to make room for a specific Rove disciple, and Chiara, whose office was a mess. The plan to dismiss the rest had festered for well over a year, but it kicked into high gear immediately after the elections. Sampson sent out the formal plan on Nov. 15, marking its importance 'High'. "An associate of Rove" told the Times that Rove learned of the plan in November. And...wait for it...remember that 18 day gap? It begins on November 15.

What we're going to find, if Congress succesfully subpoenas officials or their e-mails, is that after the Republicans got routed in November of 2006 a panicked Karl Rove turned up the flame under lots of schemes that had simmered on the back burners for months or years. New orders went out - learn the lessons of the exit polling, and make sure that 2008 brings success. The White House, in its panic, abandoned caution, and got sloppy. It left its fingerprints all over the sorts of things it had generally manipulated at arms-length. And the man who headed up the effort, by all indications, was Karl Rove's right hand, J. Scott Jennings.

Beware the ides of 2008....