There are many, many different reasons why Karl Rove might have abruptly announced his resignation today. The only one we know for sure isn't true is the one he gave -- he wants to spend more time with his family.

That is the lamest excuse in the history of political excuses. It's such a hackneyed, cliche that it smacks of panic and poor timing. If Rove had any time to think or set up another job before he left, he wouldn't have had to go with the desperate, "spend more time with my family" BS.

He said he wants to be closer to his son who is going to college in San Antonio. Which parent leaves the job of a lifetime to stalk their kids at college? Did Rove leave the White House to attend more keggers?

So, what's the real deal here? Let's start out with the most benign and work our way toward the more fun and ugly possibilities.



We outline all the possibilities below:

1. Bush's Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said that anyone who stays past Labor Day has to stay with the White House for the duration of Bush's term, so this was the perfect time to leave. But this is the first anyone has ever heard of this rule and you think they might have announced that before.

2. There is nothing political left to do in the Bush White House since they won't be running for office anymore and they don't seem to give a damn about popularity, for better or for worse. Rove left to run someone else's campaign and better utilize his real talents. But why wouldn't he have set up a huge job on one of the campaigns before he announced this awkward resignation? He says he wants to spend more time with his family, is that going to change three weeks from now when he signs with one of the Republican campaigns? It's an uncomfortable position to leave yourself in.

3. There's something rotten in Denmark. He's doing a pre-emptive strike to get out of line of fire before the shit really hits the fan in the White House. They are about to release some papers that shows that Rove clearly had a part to do in firing the US attorneys or in violating the Hatch Act, etc. Now, they'll be able to say, "What difference does it make, he's not in the White House anymore anyway. The Democrats are just pursuing an old, irrelevant political vendetta." So, he gets out before he is forced out by damaging revelations.

4. The flare theory. Some fighter planes throw out flares before an oncoming missile hits them to distract the missile and steer it in another direction. There is going to be some significantly damaging news they are about to put out and they want to distract people by throwing out Rove's resignation first, so that's all people will talk about. Normally, bad political news is put out late on a Friday in order to bury it. The fact that they have announced this early on Monday, in the beginning of the week's news cycle, makes people wonder what they might want to hide later in the news cycle this week.

5. Gonzales is also about to resign and they knew Rove would be next. Once Gonzales was out of the way, Congressional investigators would have turned their sights on Rove. Internally, the White House knows the evidence against Rove is bad and they acted ahead of Gonzales so that it won't seem that Rove's resignation had anything to do with Gonzales' departure and the related scandal.

6. Sex scandal. I told you we were going to have fun. If you put out nonsense reasons for resigning from the White House -- the best job you will likely ever have -- you have to expect that people will speculate about what the real reason is.

Here are theories that listeners already came up with this morning on our show.

a. DC Madam. He's on the list. The only thing that gets you thrown out of this administration is a sex scandal. Everything else is kosher, so it must have been sex.

b. The publisher of Hustler, Larry Flynt, promised there would be another big name on his list of Republican politicians who were caught having sexual indiscretions.

c. Jeff Gannon. This is the fake reporter that the White House used to plant favorable questions during press conferences at the White House (which by the way is completely outrageous and they completely got away with -- as usual). He also happened to be a gay, male prostitute (of course). He was on record as entering the White House on dozens of occasions where there were no press briefings. What was he doing there? Was he seeing someone at the White House?

I think all of these except 6(c) are plausible. Even though I am an evil, Bush-hater, I still think the top two possibilities are very real. But the fact that they came out with the story on a Monday, it was so sudden and unexpected and that they had no good excuse other than the usual family nonsense makes me think something is up. So, until there's a real answer, we'll get to keep speculating.

So, what do you think?




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