Throw ... GEORGE Under the Bus?

The Confidence Man has been watching the UAE-port-management scandal fairly closely.

And most inexplicable dimension to the scandal has been the apparent utterly potically tone-deaf response by the administration.

Now, W. digging in his heels and insisting that as God's Handmaiden, his choices are not to be first-guessed, let alone second guessed -- that's nothing out of the ordinary.

Likewise, to make hollow veto threats -- SOP for W.

But to totally not get the symbolism of the issue, and the mechanics of the political perceptions on the ground -- that's a shocker for the Rove machine.

The strategic answer at which the Confidence Man arrives is this: Rove has decided that it's time to throw W. under the bus.

With his approval numbers pretty much permanently stuck below 40% now (the only thing that would bump them up at this point, frankly, would be another Reichstag Fire, and that's a huge-risk/high-reward proposition) and his having radioactive coattails for the '06 midterms, W. himself is presenting as the greatest obstacle to Rove's putative 30-year/permanent-GOP-majority plan.

We've always known that Kreepy Unka Dick, as incompetent as he is, has nonetheless been the operatively indispensable element of the administration. Last week's shooting controversy has pretty much demonstrated that Dick runs the show and ain't going anywhere -- and recall that Dick has always been a much more solid chit with the American Taliban crowd than W. himself.

No, it looks to the Confidence Man that Rove has decided to get rid of W. -- not in the sense of actually kicking him out of the WH (although we have to say that it is looking more and more likely that Rove's been the one encouraging the Moonbat WashTimes/Insight impeachment-and-dissension-in-the-WH talk), but in the sense of unhitching the GOP's wagon from him. Rove will have the entire GOP running away from W. by May.