October Surprise

Rolling Stone

What last-minute scare tactic will the Republicans pull to swing the midterm elections? Our panel of experts predicts this fall's October Surprise.

This fall, with Bush's approval rating hovering near a historic low -- thanks largely to the disastrous war in Iraq but also not helped by a sluggish economy, high gas prices, GOP squabbling over immigration, the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and a general sense that we're all kind of fucked -- Republicans seem to be relying, thus far, on their perennial tactic: spooking Americans on homeland security. Unfortunately for Bush, public skepticism regarding terror alerts has been steadily rising. "It's amazing to me how short a shelf life even the London terror plot had -- it was basically a day," notes New York Times columnist Frank Rich. "I don't think they can play that card anymore. It's the boy who cried wolf."

With the political reality so clearly running against Bush, pundits wonder: How will the Democrats manage to lose this time? The party's own incompetence is generally guarantor enough, but Karl Rove and Co. surely have something special in the works, a political bombshell designed to change the momentum of the midterm elections. We surveyed a broad range of political thinkers and asked for predictions, both serious and fanciful, of possible October Surprises by the GOP. Here are the results.

Here's just a sample:

ELI PARISER, executive director of MoveOn.org

Looking at the news this fall, I have to imagine the Republicans are hoping for some little girl to go missing. Because the JonBenet Ramsey coverage has been remarkably effective at drowning out the reality of people coming home in body bags from Iraq every day. If I were Karl Rove, I would assign the Department of Justice and the FBI to drum up more celebrity show trials. That's really their best hope: another Michael Jackson scandal.

I'm sure that due to magazine lead time, Mr. Pariser didn't know about Foleygate when he said that. The GOP has their very own Michael Jackson! Hey, the Repugs are desperate enough to try it anyway: it sure worked on them!

LARRY BEINHART, author of "American Hero," the basis of the film "Wag the Dog"

Here's what Rove is going to do: He's going to have Bush assassinated. They blow up Air Force One. Maybe shoot it down with a missile that will turn out to have been stolen from a U.S. Air Force base. They'll track it back to Afghanistan, say it got into Al Qaeda's hands that way. It solves everything. It rallies Americans around this terrorist assassination and gets rid of this loser who's embarrassing them. Dick Cheney steps grimly to the helm, declares martial law and becomes President for Life.

I wouldn't rule that one out. They only needed Bush's "good ol' boy" act to get in. They don't need him any more.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, founder of the Huffington Post

Taking a page from Nixon in '68, the Bush administration will announce it has a secret plan to end the war in Iraq. They just won't let it slip that it involves selling the entire country to Halliburton.

There's more. Go read. You don't want to miss the one by Al Franken. Cagey, ain't I?