Interrupted journey toward fascism

A friend of mine opined that it was a crazy leftish idea to think that the Bush Administration was taking the U.S. down the road to fascism--even when that idea was expressed on the libertarian Right. I believe my friend was mistaken. Every action the Bush Administration has taken, and every theoretical justification for those actions, with respect to expanding the executive and demeaning the leglislative and judicial branches, seems to me to have had the sole purpose of creating and legitimizing a caudillo style fascist state. I believe the 2006 election has slowed their progress to a crawl. N.B.: that archetypical defender of constitutional rights, Arlen Specter, slipped a provision in the provision in the Patriot Act giving the Prez the right to choose U.S. Federal prosecutors without Senate review. Conveniently, that right now is being exercised to get rid of prosecutors who have Rethug politicians in their sights & replace them with Rethugs.