"Rules? In a Knife Fight?"

There are any number of reasons why I'll link to Whiskey Bar on almost a daily basis--but a big reason is that Billmon is simply so goddamned right--in both content and style:

You know, the Republican Party is full of rich people -- but that didn't stop the machine from trying to paint John Kerry as a cross between Mr. Magoo and Thurston Howell III...

Blasting Roberts as a corporate lawyer is an excellent smear tactic. People hate lawyers. They dislike and mistrust big corporations. It also conveniently happens to be true...

In fact, if I were running a propaganda campaign to try to soften Judge Roberts up before his confirmation hearings, I'd probably go a hell of a lot further than Moveon. I'd call him a fat cat corporate lawyer who made millions catering to wealthy CEOs. A Washington insider who has spent his entire adult life shuttling back and forth between K Street and Wall Street. An arrogant, out-of-touch Ivy Leaguer who probably vacations at posh resorts with other arrogant, out-of-touch Ivy Leaguers. (And I would say it no matter where he actually vacations -- or even if he takes no vacations at all.)

I would dig up every client that Roberts ever represented, and God help him if any have had even the slightest trouble with the criminal justice system. I'd put together ads juxtaposing pictures of him with photos of Bernie Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski and Ken Lay, and run them in selected media markets, just below the national media's radar screen. And if Roberts has ever issued any rulings that in any way, shape or form have made it more difficult to fight crime or terrorism, some of those ads would morph him into Pedro (sic) Escobar or Osama bin Ladin.

I'd make a lot of hay out of Roberts' ruling in the infamous french fry case -- using it as a parable for an eggheaded judge who has plenty of book learning but no common sense. If the girl was African American, so much the better for targeted ads on urban radio stations.

Ditto for Roberts's ruling on the POW damage claims. I'd get some disabled Gulf War I vets to do testimonials and hold press conferences: "Saddam only destroyed my health, but Judge Roberts destroyed my faith in my country." Gulf War Veterans for Truth has a nice ring to it.

And if all this still failed to derail the nomination, then I'd hang it around Bush's neck -- as just another sign of how arrogant and out of touch this White House has become after five years in power. And I'd hang it around the neck of every Republican Senator next year: "Those crazy sons of bitches put a POW hater on the Supreme Court!"

Is any of this true? Welllllll . . . you know, truth is such a fickle thing. I mean, I wouldn't just make up stuff. But every fact would be presented and framed to reinforce a larger theme -- of John Roberts the corporate fat cat.

In other words, I would run my slime campaign exactly the way the Republicans run theirs. I'd tear the bark off the bastard, to quote Lee Atwater's famous phrase. And let the Republicans and the corporate media howl -- it would only "catapult the propaganda."

Most importantly of all, I would do it energetically and unapologetically. And I would expect every political hack in the Democratic Party to do likewise -- or, at a minimum, keep their whimpy mouths shut. Or else.

OK, enough with the fantasies. Would I really do these things if I was calling the shots for a Democratic Party magically transformed into a well-oiled (and well-funded) political machine? Probably not -- for reasons explained in my previous post. But the decisions about whether or not to do them would be ruthlessly pragmatic: Would it work? How dangerous would it be? Risk and return, baby. Risk and return...

I mean, it's time to wake up, guys. We've got a different rule book now -- brought to you by Karl Rove and the propaganda machine from hell. The Republicans don't use those tactics because they're sick, sadistic bastards (well, not only that). They use them because they work. And until the Dems learn to play by the same rules, they're going to get their heads handed to them, time after time after time.

That doesn't mean doing everything the Rovians do. (You never know, there may be war crimes trials in this country someday.) But it does mean abandoning any false hope that truth, justice and the American way will somehow triumph over the machine -- just because they're true and just and American. They won't: not unless the machine's opponents develop a hell of a lot more street smarts than they appear to have now.

Ah, shoot--just check out the entire post.

And go ahead and read everything else, because in fact, the bartender notes that Roberts might well be a lost cause--or, at the very least, not worth the ammunition expense, particularly given the very real possibility that Team Bush, weakened or not, might get three more chances to pack the court before it's all over. Still, the fact is there's nothing wrong with a little borking now and again...it's good political exercise.

The right has, for the last 30 odd years or more, turned its firehose on the left, blasting away with various (untrue) slurs: un or anti-American, "soft" on crime/drugs/terror/welfare/poverty, pro-gay/lesbian, anti-religion, and, while a little below the radar, there's always been a tacit appeal to racism coming from the GOP, aka, the Southern Strategy (sometime, it wasn't quite so subtle, e.g. Ronald Reagan going to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980)--hell, they've turned the word "liberal" into a slur itself. And, how has the left replied?

We haven't. We've ceded territory (although, I'll admit that, back in the day, the leftist in me was ready to lump liberals into the same boat with moderate conservatives, i.e., part of the problem--but, as the song goes, I was so much older then...). We allowed the GOP to trash social programs (by playing the race card, no less), while the REAL welfare queens cheated the country out of FAR more than the chump change EVER bilked by anyone on the receiving end of St. Ronald's scorn. Fiscal prudence, on the part of Senator Kerry, was turned into "soft on terror" during the 2004 campaign. Michael Dukakis was tarred and feathered with Willie Horton--a double dip--hitting the race card AND the soft on crime button (though prison furlough programs are hardly the domain of one political party).

On the other side of the coin, it's not like the GOP doesn't have its share of coke sniffers, potheads, "alternative" lifestylers (note: NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT, Ken), "anti" Americans (or at least haters of the democratic process)--and even a few folks here and there who are willing to subvert national security for cheap political gain. Now, true, it's not all that easy to go on the offensive against these (no pun intended) VERY offensive folks when you lack a "liberal" media bullhorn ("ah, where was that Moscow gold liberal media when we needed it?"). However, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to (political) war with what you've got...and you certainly shouldn't cede ground without a fight (on that note, a good bit of my own scorn for one Bill Clinton was based his constant "triangulation," which always managed to look like a partial surrender).

Sure, there's a danger to playing hardball, as opposed to bean bag (IIRC, Hullabaloo pointed out that political success via the baiting and hatemongering method doesn't always translate into success in governance--e.g., The Bugman...to which, you can add the drunken cokehead and his team of chickenhawks). But worrying about that possibility is once again ceding ground--ground in this case that hasn't even been observed, much less taken.

Besides, is it even possible to do worse than the band of nincompoops controlling the government these days? Think about it--asleep at the wheel during the summer of 2001, letting bin Laden escape later that year, showing zero concern for a sputtering economy (though, as befits their style, blaming Clinton), posturing and talking tough about Saddam Hussein, who, for all his thuggery, WASN'T a threat to the United States--and, after failing to establish a genuine coalition, trotting out a farcical "Coalition of the Bribed Willing" that's fading faster than Arctic summer, AND somehow managing to MIS-manage the war effort to the extent that the most powerful military ever assembled was sent off to war inadequately equipped (and in inadequate numbers)...and is now being held to at best a stalemate against an insurgency that isn't exactly the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers...these people should be fighting for their political lives, not prancing around like peacocks.

Liberals/leftists/progressives should be getting their own tar and feathers ready...for example, what was it that was said about Bill Bennett and his thing for video poker? Oh yeah--I remember now:

"There's a term in the trade...We call them losers."

Exactly. And Bennett is as much the embodiment of the GOP establishment as anyone. Time to start pinning the label where it belongs.