Hopefully, this is the final word on President Bush’s aborted pardon of Isaac Toussie, the scumball real estate developer who cheated hundreds of poor homebuyers.  When word of Mr. Toussie’s fathers donations to the Republican Party became known, the president withdrew his pardon.  End of story.

Well…perhaps not.  Sarabeth at 1114.org thinks there could be a master plan here:

I’m afraid the Toussie pardon reversal doesn’t make any damn sense at all. Not as a straight story. The Bush White House openly admitting to an error, and making itself look super-silly by publicly reversing a controversial decision within 24 hours? Does that even remotely sound like the Bush White House we have come to know over the last 8 years?

So here’s what really went down and why. It wasn’t about pardoning and unpardoning Toussie at all. Toussie is just a pawn in a cruel game, a cold-blooded plot to sabotage Eric Holder’s nomination for Attorney-General.

First, they screened all pardon applications for cases that didn’t qualify for review by the Pardon Attorney because it hasn’t been five years since the completion of the sentence. Then, they winnowed it down to a shortlist of cases where the pardon would really create a stink, given the nature of the crime, something that would spontaneously spark outrage, both in the media and among obnoxious liberal bloggers. The final screen was that there had to be something they could plausibly point to as a reason for denying the pardon (plausible deniability, to coin a phrase), but it had to be something that the media could be counted on to quickly discover by themselves.

Toussie was just the poor sod whose case happened to fit the bill.

The point, of course: to draw as much media attention as possible to a pardon that didn’t go through the normal Justice Department review process. What better story hook than a sensational reversal of a controversial pardon? As the media lapped it all up, they could be counted on to diligently draw attention to that other notorious pardon that circumvented the Justice Department review process, Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich.

Congressional Republicans have already indicated they will fight the Eric Holder nomination, using the Rich pardon as fodder.  This strategy may be plausible, but seems too clever by half.  One, I don’t think the Bush White House has been as adept as Sarabeth suggests and two, the Republcans still haven’t figured out the game has changed since November.  The Republican brand has sunk even lower and the Obama brand has continued to rise.

Any move to play politics this crass and obvious could backfire hard on still clueless Republicans.