…sets in, the remaining loyal Bushbots get more transparent about their real beliefs and goals. Today’s lesson: A Wall St. Journal oped proposing that the Constitution actually allows Presidents to assume dictatorial powers, and that Presidents should assume such powers when they see fit to do so.

The author of this particular piece is no mere talk-radio goon. Harvard prof Harvey Mansfield, as profiled by Glenn Greenwald, is one of Leo Strauss’s U. of Chicago ideologues, an outspoken misogynist and homophobe, and a fawning admirer of Machiavelli. He articulately wraps his arguments in the fanciest of rhetorical flourishes. He creates structured arguments that follow from their initial premises, with all the skill of a great debater.

He is also full of shit.

Greenwald claims Mansfield’s particular slickly-packaged shit accurately expresses what the Bush machine really believes. I’m not so sure. To ascribe Mansfield’s forensic cleverness to the likes of Cheney and Rove, let alone the Chimp himself, is to imply that they (or their inner circle) are capable of logical processing at a sufficient level.

More likely, the central Bushbots have simply acted on lizard-brain tyrannical pasison. This leaves it to the peripheral Bushbots such as Mansfield to invent a reasoning behind the power-madness; just as the Soviets’ old “ministers of ideology” invented reasoning behind the Stalinists’ power-madness.