We need an easily understood scorecard, easier even than the deck of cards that listed key enemies in Iraq (many of whom were jailed and released, invalidating that list). Non-activist voters can’t grasp the breadth of that many ‘key’ people or what they can do to defeat them.

I propose a list half that long, a Top 25 Hit List to restore integrity to public service in 2006. Call it the Dump the Chump list or the Dirty Rat Exterminator list. It would contain a one or two sentence summary about each dirty rat incumbent we’re targeting to vote out of office or challenger seeking office that we’re trying to defeat.

The qualifiers that might place one on this list include:

• They are under investigation or have been indicted for an obvious ethics violation or a crime like committing fraud, taking a bribe, vote-rigging, etc.
• They’ve gone beyond the call of loyalty to another corrupt official by proposing remedies that fail to punish the lawbreakers they’re trying to protect. They’ve been the water carriers for Team Rotten.
• They come from an area where a Democratic challenger could conceivably win, not an area that typically votes 60% or more for Republicans.

So guys like Tom Delay (TX) and Bob Ney (OH) would be on the list. Pat Roberts (KS) and Mike DeWine (OH) might qualify for finding creative ways to shield the president for his unlawful wiretapping program. (Another special intelligence court? What was wrong with the first? Bush has not provided one convincing argument about any deficiencies in the first FISA court).

While the focus would be mainly on House and Senate races, a few gubernatorial races should be included, as Dem governors historically provide the best stock for future successfull presidential runs.

So readers, do tell. Who else should be on the Dump the Chump list besides the four I mentioned and Katherine Harris in Florida?

(Note how the Anonymous Liberal takes the NY Times to task for waffling on the illegality of the wiretap program. )

Addendum: Glenn Greenwald lays out the courses to bypass roadblocks that Roberts has set up. And his practical advice is important:

There is nothing surprising – and nothing even remotely fatal – about the fact that someone like Pat Roberts engaged in slimy maneuvering in order to comply with Dick Cheney’s decree that there be no investigation by that Committee into this scandal. If that little stunt is enough to make people say that the whole thing is over and the Administration won, then it means that we weren’t prepared to fight very hard over this matter.

The reality is that the more the Administration fights to suppress investigations and conceal relevant facts, the more fuel is added to this fire. Every presidential scandal in history has been exacerbated by the cover-up component. Opponents of the Clinton Administration had some of their most compelling political P.R. victories when the Administration invoked precepts of “Executive privilege” in order to block interrogation and to avoid the disclosure of documents.

Rather than viewing each obstructionist step by the Administration as some sign of our inevitable defeat and doom, we ought to see it and use it as what it is — a sign that, contrary to their bravado, the Administration is petrified of this scandal and is doing everything possible to prevent Americans — through their Congress and the courts — from discovering the truth.

After Peter Daou blogged about scandal fatigue earlier this month, I wrote a week ago:

Yet it is useful to recognize that the speed of information is way faster than government investigations. Recall how long it took to go from the Watergate break-in discovery to Nixon’s resignation. Driving through to completion often takes two years because of government impediments.

Greenwald fleshes out the details and articulates the path forward better, and you really should read it in its entirety. But I’d still add one warning caveat to that.

As I’ve noted many times in the past three years, in a rat-riddled Nixon White House, Cheney and Rumsfeld were the two rats sharp enough to get away. They are dangerous (and as we learned recently, even Five-Deferment Dick is also armed). With Bush’s Macchiavelli-in-chief (Rove) trying to find a way to wriggle past this obvious Constitutional breach, you can bet he knows the Nixon missteps inside-out. So he’ll be trying out fresh moves of evasion and coverup, likely ones we’re already seeing some of.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking DeWine and Roberts are improvising solutions. More likely, they’re just foot soldiers following Generalissimo Rove’s instructions. It looks like less a White House coverup as long as Congressional lappoodles are taking the lead in public, and Rove is the master at manipulating such perceptions.

So figuring that it took 2-1/2 years till Nixon resigned, and the illegal wiretap story broke when Bush was 3 years from completing his term, Rove’s mission is merely to stall the process another 6 months over what Nixon achieved, thus avoiding the necessity of a Bush resignation. It’s also important to remember that Bush now has a potential edge in the make-up of the Supreme Court that Nixon lacked. So the possibility’s quite high that Rove can succeed.

I don’t point that out to discourage, though. Just as Rove learned from Nixon’s experience, so can we. Not only do I echo Greenwald’s point - prepare to fight hard to achieve justice for our country - but prepare to fight harder, smarter and faster than Rove and Bush’s defenders. We don’t have the task of dealing with a Deep Throat over many months to dig out the details like Bernstein and Woodward had to. But we have to persist, we have to be repetitious, we have to school the public as quickly and regularly as we can. And we have to avoid a special prosecutor who’ll tarry in this task, and it’s wise to bet that Rove will try to find a partisan who’ll slow the investigative phase. (Consider how long Fitgerald took to get to the Libby indictment)

So repeat after me: in every post on the topic, be sure to use “illegal” constantly so it remains consistently wedded to NSA and Bush’s wiretapping in the public mind. Don’t use ’surveillance’, use ‘wiretap’ because surveillance is Bush’s word. Rove doesn’t have the playing field to himself and our collective imagination and determination can exceed anything Rove tries, if we just have the will to prevail.