Oh, those Mayberry Machiavellis:

New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million retirees when Medicare offers such coverage in 2006.

That represents one-third of all the retirees with employer-sponsored drug coverage, according to documents from the Department of Health and Human Services....

In last year's debates, Republicans repeatedly said the new drug benefits would be completely voluntary. "Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is,'' Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union Message in 2003.

But Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said it now appeared that the new law would "force millions of retirees out of comprehensive retiree drug coverage and into a flawed, inadequate program.''

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as good an example as you'll find of why you don't want Karl Rove and the political team running the policy shop. Half a trillion bucks out the door and nobody -- absolutely nobody -- is happy.

Now that's what I call changing the tone.

UPDATE: Well, sure, policy may not be their thing. But they're actually quite adept at running "the most relentlessly negative re-election campaign in memory."

MORE: And just how negative? Well, according to the AP, pretty damned negative: "Searching for 'Kerry' on the Department of Homeland Security's Web site Tuesday afternoon turned up an unexpected top hit: a Republican attack on the Democratic presidential candidate."

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