Social Security privatization is dead. The American people are against it, Congressional Republicans are against it, and even the GOP-controlled media is against it - except for Fox News, which will keep fighting for privatization until Bill O'Reilly flies up to heaven in the Rapture.

Of course, the White House does not want to accept reality. So to pretend privatization is still alive, Rove announced a 60-day campaign plan. But I guarantee that "plan" will soon be abandoned late on a Friday after the press has gone home - on Good Friday perhaps? 

I also guarantee that as soon as Social Security privatization goes the way of Bush's equally-ludicrous Mars shot, Republicans will form a circular firing squad to determine "who lost Social Security"?

There are signs the "blame game" has already begun: over at the Weekly Standard, Stephen Moore is furious that Bush even suggested he might raise the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. At the Wall Street Journal, editorialists are denouncing the Bush strategy of selling "a national forced march" rather than the glowing Randian dream of an "ownership society."

Because I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, I feel compelled to save Republicans from the excruciating agony of self-examination.

So who lost Social Security? None other than the "architect" himself, Karl Rove.

Rove is a strategic genius. But even strategic geniuses make mistakes. Just ask Napoleon and Hitler why they decided to winter in Russia.

Like Napoleon and Hitler, Rove had good reason to become catastrophically arrogant. After turning Bush's 2000 popular defeat into a Supreme Court victory, after turning Bush's impeachable 9-11 failures into an epochal triumph, after selling a massively costly war based entirely on lies, after turning a Vietnam deserter into a conquering hero, and after stealing a second term in Ohio, Rove concluded he could get away with anything.

Including jumping squarely onto the Third Rail of American politics, Social Security.

If you've ever stood on a New York City subway platform and gazed at a third rail, you know that's gonna hurt.

But Rove has never actually seen a third rail. He's from the Republic of Texas, where public transportation is unconstitutional. The only forms of transportation Rove knows are stretch limousines and private jets.

Rove and his crowd used to mock "limousine liberals." Their mockery made them so rich they became Learjet Conservatives, looking down on their fellow Americans from 30,000 feet.

And that was Rove's fatal mistake.

At 30,000 feet, Americans look atomized and unconnected. Every family lives in its own suburban home, cleanly separated from its neighbors by a driveway and lawn, connected to each other not through shared experience and wisdom, but instead through corporate-programmed TV.

From 30,000 feet, playing "divide and conquer" with the American people looks like child's play.

But on the ground, American families are very different.

Across generations, American families look after each other. Grandparents look after grandchildren. Parents look after their young children first, and then their aging parents. Eventually the children grow up and look after their grandparents, completing the cycle of family love.

Rove thought he could break that cycle. He thought he could turn grandchildren against their parents and grandparents by appealing to their isolation, ignorance and greed.

So Rove jumped on the Third Rail - and got burned alive.

America's grandparents saw through the privatization scam. After all, they remember life before Social Security, how FDR fought to create it, and how Republicans fought it every step of the way.

America's parents also saw through Bush's plan. They remember the dot-com bust and the massive corporate scandals. They know the stock market can be trusted only so far - but not far enough to rely upon in old age.

And between them, America's grandparents and parents helped young Americans learn that Social Security is a promise across generations, a promise America has kept for 70 years - and will continue to keep even when young Americans retire.

So is this the end of the "Republican Revolution"?

It's hard to tell. Democrats should be celebrating this victory and planning to crush every Republican in Congress who supported privatization. Over at Talking Points Memo - the virtual power plant of the Social Security Third Rail - Joshua Marshall is making a list.

(Happily Robert Novak is volunteering to help Marshall by endorsing a suicidal House vote on an "unadulterated" privatization bill. Dare we dream?)

But the real question for Republicans is whether they will continue to reject reality, both at home and abroad, as they have done for the past four years.

Just today, U.S. deaths in Iraq topped 1,500, and more of our "allies" decided to take their troops home. Bush's "charm offensive" through Europe was a failure; any move towards invading Iran will be met with infinitely angrier protests than his invasion of Iraq.

Back at home, even Alan Greenspan is becoming concerned about Bush's massive deficits - the same deficits he blessed when he endorsed Bush's massive tax giveaway to the rich in 2001.

And on Capitol Hill, the Gannon/Guckert scandal continues to grow, with House Democrats demanding a vote on an investigation of the security "lapse" that let a gay male prostitute within spitball distance of the President.

The "Republican Revolution" is in trouble because Karl Rove, like Daedalus, thought he could fly right up to the sun.

In Texas, they don't believe in reading European literature or in learning European languages. But there's one Greek word the Busheviks really should learn:

Hubris.