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THIS OUGHT TO BE MUCH MORE DAMAGING TO SANTORUM THAN ANYTHING RICK OR HIS SUGAR DADDY SAID ABOUT CONTRACEPTION

I know all the focus in the past couple of days has been on the Foster Friess aspirin joke and on Rick Santorum's past statements about sexual matters, but this strikes me as having the potential to do real harm to Santorum right now as well as in the future:

Kyle Mantyla of People for the American Way's indispensable Right Wing Watch has come up with an audiotape of a Rick Santorum address to the students of the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, delivered in 2008. It's an altogether remarkable speech depicting Rick as a leader in a "spiritual war" against Satan for control of America. Much of its involves the usual right-wing stuff about the conquest of academia (outside bastions like Ave Maria) by the forces of moral relativism, but then there is this Santorum assessment of mainline Protestantism:

[O]nce the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you'd say, 'wait, the Catholic Church'? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.

If I were Mitt Romney, I would give up on trying to be the wingnut de tutti wingnutti and just get that quote in front of every mainline Protestant he possibly can. I'd use it in public appearances. I'd put it in mailers. I'd work it into ads:

we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.

I'd tell voters: "He has literally said that your church is under the influence of Satan. He thinks you're no longer Christian." I'd say this to upmarket suburbanites and to salt-of-the-earth types who bring tuna-and-noodle casseroles to church suppers.

The whole speech is nutty, but it's nutty in a way that barely penetrates anymore: the culture is sexually depraved, academia is under evil influence, etc., etc. This is the kind of thing that would lose Santorum all kinds of votes in the general election, but not now, and the people it alienates probably are probably already lost to him.

But there are still enough mainline Protestants in the GOP that Romney could hurt Santorum now with this. Maybe Santorum isn't getting many votes from people who belong to mainline Protestant churches -- but he can't afford to be seen as bigoted against what is still a Republican voter bloc.

Romney won't raise this -- probably because he's afraid to talk about religion for fear of reminding Republicans of his religion -- but he should.

(Watch Santorum's speech and read the transcript at the link embedded in the quote above.)

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 3:40 pm

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WHAT TOM SAID...

... in response to MSNBC's decision to fire Pat Buchanan:




Indeed.

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UPDATE: Oh, geez:

Statement by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski regarding Pat Buchanan

Everyone at Morning Joe considers Pat Buchanan to be a friend and a member of the family. Even though we strongly disagree with the contents of Pat's latest book, Mika and I believe those differences should have been debated in public....

Those ideas? They have been debated in public -- primarily between the years 1939 and 1945.

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ADELSON GIVING TO ROMNEY -- INDIRECTLY?

Earlier this month, there were stories -- from The New York Times, from CNN -- making the point that casino zillionaire Sheldon Adelson really, really likes Mitt Romney, even though he gives millions of dollars to Newt Gingrich's super PAC. Adelson, we were told, has promised to help Romney just as soon as Mitt gets the GOP nomination -- a nomination Adelson's millions are preventing MITT from obtaining.

But maybe there's no paradox in this anymore.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's faltering campaign is about to get another shot in the arm, CBS News has learned.

Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson plans to give another dollarsignr10 million to the outside group backing the former Georgia lawmaker who is running behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, a source close to Adelson told CBS News....

Does Romney now want this to happen because Gingrich is so far back in the polls he needs to be kept in the race so he can split the anti-Romney vote with Santorum? If I were Mitt, I suppose I'd want this.

Still, Adelson's "I love you, but I'm dating Newt" approach to political check-writing always reminds me of those stories about the young Richard Nixon volunteering to drive Pat on her dates with other men until she finally agreed to marry him -- which always struck me as cringe-inducingly sad.

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UPDATE: My theory is so brilliant that The Wall Street Journal advanced it two days ago.

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DAVID BROOKS CHECKS THE LINE FOR PARADISE, SEES NO NON-BOBOS

David Brooks is getting a lot of flak, particularly on Twitter (where he's trending), for his column about Jeremy Lin's Christian beliefs. Brooks is being mocked primarily for writing this:

Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He's a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn't neglect the biggest anomaly. He's a religious person in professional sports.

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds:

Did David Brooks just claim Lin is an anomaly because "he's a religious person in professional sports?" Are there no black people in sports?

To which I'd add: or whites from the South?

Or, y'know, Tim Tebow? But Brooks does seem to be aware of the existence of religious athletes:

We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow.

So what is his point? (Felix Gilman has a thought: "I think problem here is that Brooks is misusing 'anomaly' when really all he means is 'thing' or 'column hook.'")

NPR's Steve Inskeep wants to cut Brooks a little slack:

... in re: D.Brooks: religion not "anomaly" in sports, but rest of column provocative: contradiction btwn faith & act

And that's not completely off base. The point Brooks goes on to make is that religion is about selflessness, as Lin himself has put it, while sports is about the opposite. Brooks writes:

The moral universe of modern sport is oriented around victory and supremacy....

The modern sports hero is competitive and ambitious....

He is assertive, proud and intimidating....

But there's no use denying -- though many do deny it -- that this ethos violates the religious ethos on many levels. The religious ethos is about redemption, self-abnegation and surrender to God....

Jeremy Lin has wrestled with this tension quite openly. In a 2010 interview with the Web site Patheos, Lin recalled, "I wanted to do well for myself and my team. How can I possibly give that up and play selflessly for God?" ...

The odds are that Lin will never figure it out because the two moral universes are not reconcilable....

OK, fine -- but, David, why write this column now? Why write it about Lin and not, say, Tebow, or one of the many other athletes who wear their religion on their sleeves?

Well, of course, this is Brooks being precisely what he accuses liberals of being: someone who's unable to give serious consideration to people who aren't part of his sociocultural subgroup. Non-white athletes who regularly thank God in post-game interviews don't count because, well, they're non-white -- who cares? Tebow isn't relevant to Brooks, either because Brooks doesn't want to critique a hero of the Applebee's salad bar or because Brooks barely noticed Tebow's existence all last year, even as he was scolding us liberals for effete contempt directed at heartlanders. (Um, we sure noticed Tebow.) Or maybe Brooks just thinks Tebow is a noble savage whose simple faith is charming to observe but isn't worth analyzing. Lin, on the other hand, is (based on his educational attainments) one of us -- so what he thinks about God actually matters.

And there's Brooks in a nutshell: the guy who mocks us for our dismissal of the heartland embodies what he denounces.

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 9:30 am

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AS USUAL, IGNORANCE HAS A CONSERVATIVE BIAS

Most of us on the left are assuming that the right's decision to go all in on contraception is a hug political blunder, but CNN makes clear that this can play out the right's way if -- naturally -- people are kept confused and ill-informed:

Half of all Americans say they oppose the Obama administration's new policy concerning employer-provided health insurance plans and their coverage of contraceptive services for female employees including those at religiously affiliated institutions, according to a new national survey....

Surveys on this topic tell a mixed story because many Americans know little about the issue. Recent CBS and Fox polls indicate support for the new policy, using questions that describe the new policy in some detail. But in the CNN poll, when asked their opinion of the Obama policy with no details spelled out, support was much less and a large partisan divide emerged. A recent Pew poll also suggests Americans are closely divided, and that poll may hold the key to the differences. Nearly four in ten Americans say they have heard nothing at all about this controversy.

"The CNN poll illustrates the road ahead for the White House," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "If the administration can't inform more Americans about the details of the policy - details that some other polls show to be popular - the public is likely to split along party lines. Many will dislike the plan simply due to the fact that this is an Obama initiative."

So there it is: if the White House and other supporters of contraception keep the public informed, we win. If the right floods the zone with bamboozlement and misdirection, the right wins.

Still feel 100% confident in the outcome? I don't. Yes, we definitely should be able to win this one, but don't assume that the right has no path to victory -- and the right's path would be one the right is very, very familiar with.

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LIVE BY CITIZENS UNITED, DIE BY CITIZENS UNITED

I don't even know why I'm quoting this, since everyone in America seems to know about it already. But if you missed it, here goes. After the quote, my thoughts.

This whole contraception debate is just so new-fangled, says billionaire investor and mega-funder to the super PAC supporting former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) for President, Foster Friess.

In a simpler time, there were other ways to deal with female sexual desire. "Back in my day, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly," he said Thursday on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, setting the host back for moment....

We know that the only reason Santorum is still in the race is that Citizens United allowed a candidate to survive on massive outlays by one individual to a super PAC allied with, though technically separate from, the candidate's campaign. Once upon a time, of course, every viable campaign had to have donations from a full roster of rich people. Now one is enough.

That means if you're, say, Santorum or Newt Gingrich, your patron all but gets naming rights to you. (And someday, I'm sure, naming rights will literally be up for grabs, and will be offered to corporations as well; four years and a few Roberts Court rulings from now, I look forward to the Tostitos® Mitch Daniels 2016 Presidential Campaign.)

But what this means right now is that Foster Friess isn't just one of a bunch of rich guys who gave Santorum money -- Friess owns Santorum. That's why this hurts Santorum, at least if he gets to the general election. Pre-Citizens United, you had to be a felon to hurt the candidate you financed this much. Now, if he's your boy, practically anything you do can hurt him.

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WORST BUDDY COMEDY EVER

If the "Santorum is more popular but Romney wins the nomination" scenario envisioned by Jonathan Bernstein plays out, it has the potential to make McGovern-Eagleton look like a minor stumble -- and to be utterly hilarious if you're not a Republican:

... Santorum's campaign [is] badly lagging in organization. This could mean he doesn't reap all the delegates that might be his due.... In most GOP caucus states, the voting is not strictly connected to delegate selection. If Santorum's voters don’t understand the procedures, it's very possible he could win the vote and yet pick up only a handful of delegates. Indeed, that may have already happened in caucus states he's won, like Iowa, Colorado, and Minnesota.

... Romney will apparently win Arizona's winner-take-all primary even if Santorum does hang on for a Michigan win, where the delegates are apportioned in a complex mix of rules. It's very possible that Romney and Santorum could split the two states, giving Santorum great headlines, while Romney cleans up in delegates.

... the popularity contest could leave Santorum as the clear, unambiguous winner, while Romney becomes the clear, unambiguous nominee. Imagine Santorum finishing with a five point edge or more in votes -- even as Romney gets crowned the GOP candidate for president.

If that happens, it's hard to see rank-and-file Republicans accepting the outcome as legitimate....

Yikes. And it's easy to imagine Mitt the Machine trying to argue that the math requires everyone to just accept his victory -- even as the inflamed right-wing mobs are howling for his head.

At that point, I think the party elders would put the proverbial horse's head in his bed and force him to accept the only solution that could possibly mollify the base: Rick Santorum as the #2 on the ticket. (In fact, Mitt hasn't ruled A Romney/Santorum ticket out.)

Now, the world of politics seems to be divided into three camps: people who think Santorum is an awful candidate, people who think Romney is a worse candidate than Santorum (hey, it's not just me -- BooMan thinks Romney is worse), and people who can't agree on which one is more awful. But if this scenario pans out, I think -- under extreme duress, and after much intra-party brawling -- we're going to get two for the price of one.

Can you contain your excitement?

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 12:40 pm

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THE MORE WE IGNORE THEM, THE CLOSER THEY GET

Yes, I've been talking about Rick Santorum as someone the general electorate wouldn't immediately laugh off the national stage -- but I've done so in large part because I assumed his obsession with the alleged evils of non-marital and non-procreative sex could be kept in the background as he campaigned. He'd talk mostly about the economy and foreign policy, the rest of America would talk mostly about the economy and foreign policy, and lots of people would go to the polls not really grasping that he's extremely far to the right on social issues. After all, social issues simply haven't been on most people's agendas in the past few years ... right?

Except that the right seems to want to pick a fight on these issues, for reasons I can't begin to understand. Why would you want to do this when you might be about to nominate a presidential candidate whose most profound difference with swing voters is on precisely these issues? Why draw attention to that in this way?

The furor over President Obama's birth control mandate has swiftly entered a new plane, with supporters and opponents alike calling the subject a potent weapon for the November elections and mounting what they say will be prolonged campaigns to shape public perceptions of the issue: Is it about religious liberty or women's health?

Roman Catholic bishops, evangelicals, other conservatives and the Republican presidential candidates have dismissed as meaningless the effort by President Obama last week to soften the rule, which requires that employees of religiously affiliated institutions like schools and hospitals, but not churches, receive free contraception in their health plans.

Sensing an opportunity, Congressional Republicans have leapt into the fray. An amendment to block any health mandate that violates a business owner's beliefs is before the Senate -- and a target of intense lobbying. A House committee is holding a hearing on Thursday to ask, "Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?"

But the political repercussions could be much wider. "This was an unexpected gift," said Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a Republican strategist.

And at the hearings this morning, Congressman Darrell Issa insultingly refused to allow a pro-choice woman to testify, defying congressional custom (Democrats on the panel had requested that she be heard):

Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that "As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration's actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness."

And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules' alleged infringement on "religious liberty," not contraception coverage, and denied the request. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule.

And this comes at a time when state legislatures, even in battleground states like Virginia, are pursuing personhood bills and mandatory ultrasounds before abortions. Why?

I think the right is mostly making short-sighted calculations about how to pursue this year's campaigns -- "Well, if the economy is getting better, and Obama got bin Laden killed, all we have left is abortion." But that's absurd when "all you have left" is potentially very unpopular. This is stuff you keep at the state level, assuming most voters won't notice -- you don't trumpet it in a presidential election year when your pro-choice opponent is rising in the polls (and your current front-runner's biggest weakness is that voters who pay attention to him -- which could be all voters soon -- know he's a huge prig).

Is this an attempt to give cover to Mitt Romney if he's the nominee, because it's feared that he won't turn out the base otherwise? Is it Catholic and Protestant organizations just opportunistically trolling for wingnut support and cash? Is it a woeful misreading of the electorate, the result of epistemic closure?

I don't know. But I think making this the focus of GOP efforts in 2012 is a disastrous idea. Even Santorum could make it a race if he were seen as a guy with right-wing economic ideas and a coal-miner grandfather who happened to be sexually square. But put that last bit first and he's really, really doomed -- as is the entire GOP no matter who tops the ticket, if the right keeps this up.

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 10:00 am

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IT'S STARTING TO LOOK LIKE MORNING IN AMERICA, BUT IF IT WEREN'T...

DougJ and I usually see eye to eye, but he really doesn't understand why anyone would regard Rick Santorum as even a mild threat:

Look, Santorum lost as an incumbent by 18 points, wrote a book saying that women shouldn't work, the guy is a shit general election candidate and no amount of double-reverse contrarianism will convince me otherwise, so laissez le Santorum roulez.

Well, on that second point, Bob McDonnell of Virginia wrote a master's thesis saying women shouldn't work and then won a gubernatorial race by 18 points, a year after Barack Obama won his state. He has sky-high approval ratings in his state (even as Obama's doing well there again in the polls). He's near the top of Mitt Romney's VP short list. (America is full of people who agree with virtually everything feminism stands for but will tell you they don't like feminism.)

Look, obviously, judging from the latest polls, Obama is looking better and better to voters and all the Republicans are looking worse and worse. But if Obama now looks effectively unbeatable running against Santorum, it's because consumer confidence is climbing -- and, yes, because Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot, in Congress, in state houses and legislatures, and in the presidential race. But the latter will cease to be true sooner or later, and as for the rest -- well, yeah, Obama beats Newt Gingrich by 18 points right now, but why isn't he beating all of these clowns by double digits?

The American electorate is still conditioned by decades of propaganda to regard government spending as a monstrous evil (despite the fact that people cling to the programs they use) and to regard Republicans as careful fiscal stewards. People like sex, but I'm not sure they like thinking of themselves as people who like sex, which is why they support abortion rights and (increasingly) gay rights and stick up for single mothers and nevertheless vote for Reagan and both Bushes and, last year, a whole lot of teabaggers.

So, sure, Obama will probably crush Santorum in November 2012 if he's the Republican nominee -- but I'm not sure he would have crushed him if he'd had to run against him in mid-2011, or (especially) in 2010. I think it would have been a tough fight. America still doesn't regard people like Santorum as utterly beyond the pale.

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And now Kos is trying to get Democrats to vote for Santorum in upcoming primary states? Yeah, sure, do it -- though I think it's hard to get enough people to join in these efforts to make a difference (Rush Limbaugh's pro-Hillary Operation Chaos didn't have much impact in '08). Right now Santorum doesn't seem as if he needs the help, but we all see the Romney Death Star on the horizon, so I guess Rick's the guy you want to help if you want to keep the Republicans bashing one another. (Then again, if the Romney campaign is really running out of money, as is being reported, and if Santorum is rising in every GOP poll, should Democrats vote for Mitt to keep him in the race?)

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 6:06 am

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HOW DO YOU SAY "FLOP" IN SPANISH?

Seriously? The Republicans are looking at intraparty chaos and bad poll numbers and are so desperate to change the subject that they're going to pretend to be offended by an unambiguously non-racist tweet from Jim Messina, a top Obama campaign official -- and we're going to take their utterly fake outrage seriously?

Here's the story, if you don't know it: Dana Milbank published a column in The Washington Post titled "Does the GOP Care About Latino Voters?" The column is about the decision by Republican senators to delay for months the approval of a Cuban-American judge's appointment to the federal bench, which Milbank sees (correctly) as emblematic of the GOP's self-sabotaging hostility to Latin-Americans. Milbank concludes with an observation about the GOP's dawdling and fumfering while debating the appointment:

Some [senators] spoke about transportation. Others spoke about the budget. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spoke about the wonders of his state. "The lettuce in your salad this month almost certainly came from Arizona," McCain said. "It's also believed that the chimichanga has its origin in Arizona."

The chimichanga? It may be the only thing Republicans have left to offer Latinos.

And then, after the column appeared:

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina dubbed the last sentence the "line of the day" on Twitter.

That caused Republicans and conservatives to slam Messina on Twitter. Some even called the comment racist.

Do I have to explain this? How the hell is it racist to quote a line pointing out racist contempt?

No Republican actually thinks this was a racist tweet. The Republicans merely believe they can pretend to be offended and we'll take their fauxtrage seriously.

In the past, I've called this "truth creep": You talk about something in a way that seems accurate, and that's close to accurate, but that differs just enough that you've completely and uttered distorted the meaning -- and then you hope that everyone runs with your phony version of the truth.

In basketball, what the Republicans are doing is a common tactic: if an opposing player lightly touches you, or even brushes close by you, you fall to the ground in n Oscar-worthy show of having been brutalized, and hope you manage to get a foul called on your opponent. This is known as a "flop."

That's exactly what the GOP's phony outrage should be called.

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I THINK CALLING IT A "STRATEGY" IS GIVING REPUBLICANS TOO MUCH CREDIT

David Frum looks at President Obama's increasingly impressive poll numbers and concludes that the Republican Party has made an error in planning:

Republican strategy over the past 2 years has been premised on the assumption that President Obama is so hopelessly weakened that the GOP needn't bother addressing centrist voters at all.

That was never a very plausible assumption....

Whether it is the Ryan plan or the debt ceiling showdown or -- now -- contraception, Republicans have spent three years talking to themselves. It has been a narcissistic self-indulgence -- and may soon prove a very costly one as well.

I think it's a stretch to call what Republicans have come up with a "strategy." The people who are taking on these fights in the GOP aren't shrewdly and carefully assessing the percentages of liberals, moderates, and conservatives in America, and planning accordingly -- they're drinking their own Kool-Aid and concluding, at least on a subconscious level, that they don't have to worry about non-conservative voters because non-conservatives aren't really Americans.

Ann Coulter says Democrats would never win if we took away women's right to vote. Rush Limbaugh says Obama is pursuing an electoral strategy of trying win the votes of "the takers," not "the makers." These are rhetorical flights of fancy, but I think a large percentage of Republicans actually believe them, and have started to think that voters who don't pull the (R) lever aren't actually voters at all, because they shouldn't be. The ultimate example of this is the tea party's claim that its members are "taking our country back" -- as if it exclusively belongs to them. And hey, look: there's Rick Santorum, in the upbeat ad he just released this week, being described as "a trusted conservative who gives us the best chance to take back America."





"Republicans have spent three years talking to themselves," Frum writes, which is accurate -- although I'd say that's been true for a lot longer than three years. But what's more important is that Republicans have spent three-plus years assuming that all the people in America who aren't Republican are so depraved that we don't deserve to be called American. They've made political moves based on the notion that we don't really exist -- or at least that we couldn't possibly continue to maintain our beliefs when confronted with the self-evident wonderfulness of what they have to say.

And now they're paying the price.

(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)

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HOW OBSESSED IS FOX WITH MEDIA MATTERS?

Front page at Fox Nation right now (click to enlarge):




Twenty-one stories on the front page under the lead story and six of them are about Media Matters? Seriously? This is what you think America -- or even your audience -- cares about?

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NOT EVEN TRYING TO CONCEAL THE HYPOCRISY

This is pure Romney:

Romney Surrogate Attacks Santorum for Voting the Same Way He Did

... On a conference call Tuesday afternoon, former Missouri senator and Romney surrogate Jim Talent criticized Santorum's support for expanding government spending, including his vote for the Medicare Part D in 2003 -- a program for which Talent himself voted....

Talent's attack comes a day after we had this from another Romney backer:

Virginia's Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell on Monday warned Rick Santorum against demeaning women in the military, following controversial remarks made by the Republican presidential candidate last week.

"I like Rick Santorum a lot, I just disagree with any inference that he might have made that somehow women aren't capable of serving on the front lines and serving in combat positions," McDonnell told CNN....

McDonnell has a daughter who's served in Iraq, and he's praised her service -- though in the master's thesis McDonnell wrote at Regent University, McDonnell said women should avoid working outside the home (just as Santorum did in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family):

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family....

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women....

What's next from Team Romney? Chris Christie saying that Santorum is starting to look a little portly in his sweater vests?

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MITT ROMNEY: THE RIGHT'S ANTI-PROPAGANDA MACHINE

Well, here it comes, as expected:

...In an interview with BuzzFeed, a Romney advisor offered details of the campaign's coming two-front attack, which the campaign expects will be echoed by the Super PAC....

The Pennsylvania Republican will "be defined by two things," the advisor said.

The first is a comparison to Barack Obama: "He's never run anything," said the advisor. The Pennyslvanian's experience is limited to roles as a legislator and legislative staffer. "The biggest thing he ever ran is his Senate office," he siad.

The second is a challenge to Santorum's Washington experience.

"They’re going to hit him very hard on earmarks, lobbying, voting to raise the federal debt limit five times," said the advisor. "The story of Santorum is going to be told over the next few weeks in a big way." ...

Is this going to work? To me it seems like thin gruel, but millions of dollars' worth of thin gruel will fill you up, I guess. When Gingrich was the top anti-Romney, I didn't think Newt's fans were going to care much about ancient ethics charges in Congress (there are Democrats in Congress!), but then I started reading stories about formerly pro-Newt or Newt-curious voters having a Pavlovian response of "Ethics!" when Gingrich's name was mentioned. So I guess it's a pretty effective technique.

This really might clear away the last obstacle standing between Romney and the nomination -- but what's it doing to the Republican Party? And I don't mean merely "Can Republicans stand a bruising primary battle?" I mean what is it doing to the myths right-wingers live by?

After decades of propaganda from talk radio, Regnery, Fox, and Koch, right-wingers believe conservatism is perfect and the emergence of a right-wing savior who kills all the bad guys (us) and gets rid of all the bad laws (everything we support) is actually possible. This is a religious faith, one that's carefully cultivated every day, every hour, via right-wing media.

And now Mitt Romney is laying waste to the belief system.

The faithful can see that he's not their perfect hero. Then, whenever he's challenged by someone they think might be their perfect hero, he floods the airwaves with the message that the apparent knight in shining armor is a fraud -- just like all the earlier knights.

That's why it must suck to be a right-winger these days: your likely standard-bearer's message is that everyone is flawed, everything is compromised and corrupted, and this is the best you're going to do -- a message that debunks every bit of right-wing propaganda you've absorbed over the past twenty years, which posits the existence of Pure Evil and (at least in theory, and certainly in the person of the now departed Saint Reagan) Pure Good.

In this way, Mitt Romney's campaign may be having more of a positive impact than all of the left's media outlets combined. It's repudiating the propaganda. It's destroying the wingnut dream.

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SO MANY ANTEDILUVIAN IDEAS, SO LITTLE TIME

Tim Graham of NewsBusters is being mocked for his disgust at the fleeting same-sex image near the end of this charming Valentine's Day "Google doodle" ("Valentine's Day is a big day that gay-left advocates expect their love to be honored as just the same," Graham harrumphs, ungrammatically):





I'm surprised, though, that Graham (or some other right-winger) hasn't criticized the video in another way -- as part of "the war against boys, or "war on masculinity."

Think about it: The young man in the video does everything he can to get the young woman to notice him, and it all fails -- until (SPOILER ALERT) he joins her in the gender-stratified act of jumping rope! Yikes! The only way he can get the girl is to become the girl! It's feminism run amok!!! That's what she wants him to do before he can be her guy! That's what she forces him to do!

Argh -- I've been reading this crap way too long. I seriously believe that, if I decided to devote the time and trouble to it, I could now write a fake right-wing blog, posting boilerplate winger ideas multiple times a day, and never get caught.