Now that we've quaffed the koolaid, put down the glass ...

Bush 43 let the cat out of the bag yesterday. He just couldn't keep it secret; it worked too well.

"I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he [Rove] was."

Of course Bush did. He hit every small town in America. Rove had nothing to do with it.

But that was the plan. Let the Dems win. Both houses, with some voter fraud bones pitched in here and there to heighten election night drama.

Brilliant. Rove's best work yet, you might say. Except it was Bush 43's consiglieres who engineered this palace coup. They needed a Dem House and Senate to dispatch it in record time. They told Rove to sit on his hands.

So what do they get for this Maine event checkmate?

(1) Booting Rummy isolated a stunned Cheney, his neocons, and their brand of career warmongering Israel-firsters in one chop. Publicly. Wrapped up by the curb now for two years "because the nation has spoken." Thump. [Emanuel, Perle, Frum, and Wurmser, et al, got a whiff it might happen a month ago; hence, the frantic rewording of their previous rants.]

(2) The nation's sigh of relief will blow fairy dust all over Gate's confirmation because the nation wants its boys home. Who cares what Gates had to do with the genesis of the current debacle back in the 80s.

(3) The Dems will have a scant two years to mop up a political Katrina, then shoulder the blame; long enough for the GOP to take 2008 advantage of a beleaguered nation's sloppy grasp of cause and effect.

(4) Bush 41 protects the family's wartime legacies and dynastic name, the understandable concern of an historically important dying man. Rummy and Cheney get none of the credit, relegated to history as out-of-control civil servants, not visionary men.

(5) Rove's new 9-to-5 is scandal free and, after another turkey dinner in two weeks, free to Atwater a 2008 win.