Biggest Priority for Right: More Pseudo-Scandals

Conservative Job 1. Now that conservatives are returning from the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference, they have a big job ahead of them--creating bigger, better, and more frequent pseudo-scandals for the Democrats.

The Crisis is Almost Upon Them. The political situation for conservatives is grim and there's no reason to think it's going to get any better. The Iraq War seems to get more unpopular by the minute and there's such widespread contempt for the Bush administration that conservatives barely tried to defend him at CPAC. The treatment of disabled veterans at Walter Reed is already a big scandal and the purge of federal district attorneys looks like it's growing into a big scandal while Congressional hearings over war profiteering are looming on the horizon. Worse, there are enough warnings of an economic recession at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 that stock markets are panicking. Unfortunately for the Republicans, 2008 is an election year when they will be defending their record on the economy. Few people have been satisfied with Bush prosperity because it's been so focused on the top 1/2 of one percent. Even fewer will be satisfied with the second Bush downturn.

Things aren't much better politically. McCain and Giuliani might be polling even with Hillary and Obama now, but a lot of conservatives don't see them or Mitt Romney as strong candidates for the presidency. The situation is even worse at the lower levels. I saw an estimate that the Republicans saved 10 House seats through Republican National Campaign Committee smear campaigns. If that's the case, the Republicans have to wonder just how weak they are in the House and the Senate.

The Pseudo-Scandal Solution. The solution to these problems. Since January, conservative bloggers and op-ed writers have responded to the political weakness of the Republicans by identifying and publicizing a series of pseudo-scandals. By the time the right was done with Nancy Pelosi's plane, they were ready to move on to John Edwards' feminist bloggers, Barack Obama's education in Indonesia, and anonymous commenters who were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn't die in last week's attack. Certainly, it took a lot of work and ingenuity to get these pseudo scandals out (that was especially the case with investigating anonymous blog comments) and the publicity might have kept things from getting worse for the Republican cause.

But, let's face it right-wingers, this little trickle of scandals has not been moving the poll numbers for Republicans. You need better and more frequent scandals. There must be a gay guy or a lesbian on Hillary Clinton's payroll somewhere. Why haven't you found them? Didn't some of Barack Obama's new Hollywood friends make morally offensive movies? Why haven't we heard anything about that? You're not working hard enough and you don't have big enough staffs of investigators? Maybe you should raise more money so you can hire "smear artists."

Wait a minute. "Artist" might be seen as effeminate. How about "smear warriors" instead. Once you have the cash in hand, have your smear warriors serve apprenticeships with Ann Coulter and Michell Malkin before letting them loose on the Democrats. Of course, none of this has anything to do with nuking Iran, privatizing social security, getting rid of public education, eliminating more taxes for the wealthy, or any of the noble causes that conservatives really want to promote.

But these are tough times, and if digging deeper into the gutter is what tough times call for, then tough people dig deeper into the gutter and don't complain about it. Did Patton care whether his troops got dirty? Of course not! The point is to win and if you can't win the point is to lessen your losses. And that's what digging for pseudo-scandals is all about--lessening losses.

Hmm. Maybe I should work on my inspirational cliches. Anyway, I hope that all my right-wing friends enjoy digging around for new pseudo-scandals. It's really your best bet for keeping things from getting worse.

Got to go to work. Links later.