With friends like these ...

The National Republican Congressional Committee's propaganda arm inaugurated Campaign '08 yesterday, blasting away on radio and through automated phone calls at "18 freshman Democrats for allegedly marching in lockstep with [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi], a California Democrat who is regularly depicted by Republicans as an out-of-touch liberal."

Some chestnuts, no matter how splendidly silly, just never die, and the NRCC's advertising campaign about lockstepping Congressional liberals reminds me of Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Interestingly, the ad campaign's thrust is mostly a rehash of what already failed the GOP in 2006, which in turn mostly serves as a reminder of how wretchedly clueless the GOP is.

"Nancy Pelosi is not a good sell in the majority of these places," said NRCC Communications Director Jessica Boulanger, "and the fact that these freshmen are tying themselves to her every day in Washington is going to create significant problems for them back home."

The fact is, Ms. Boulanger, Nancy Pelosi may not be "a good sell in the majority of these places," but she's not much of a bad sell, either. Strange as it may seem to political junkies who eat and breathe this stuff, most voters wouldn't know the speaker of the House from the sergeant at arms. The NRCC tried blackening Democratic challengers in 2006 by "pre-"linking them to Pelosi, and most voters' reaction was, "Say what? Who?"

In addition, Ms. Boulanger, what a humdinger of a contradictory week to launch your message that "These Democrats are making themselves vulnerable by abandoning pledges they made on the campaign trail in exchange for lockstep partisanship in Washington."

For most voters there was only one pledge made in 2006 on one issue that counts, and not even the most skillful of hysterical propagandists could convincingly characterize the Democratic mishmash on that issue as a paradigm of partisanship.

But hey, that's still better than the sloganeering of the NRCC's chairman, Rep. Tom Cole, who for inexplicable reasons is fond of saying, "All politics is local until it isn't." Not exactly "New Frontier" stuff. Keep it up, Tom.

What should really worry these freshmen Democrats, however, is the back-up they're receiving from their own national campaign committee.

"Clearly, Republicans are running scared because Americans are responding positively to Democrats' New Direction agenda," said Jennifer Crider, Ms. Boulanger's communications counterpart at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- a "New Direction" agenda that is perhaps more aptly described as "Every Which Way But Loose."

But then Ms. Crider went and said something really silly, almost as splendidly silly as the Republican chestnut about lockstepping liberals: "While the NRCC is forced to rely on smear tactics, Democrats are delivering real results for the American people -- raising the minimum wage, lowering gas prices and holding the president accountable for the war in Iraq."

The first of those triumviral "results" is true enough, but of course gets washed away by torrential ridicule over the following two. It makes one wonder if this "communications director" reads the papers, and if so, if she has driven to a newsstand lately to buy one.

If I were one of these freshmen Democrats I'd lie in terror every night, brooding over not what the hapless NRCC is up to, but what my supportive "friends" at DCCC are saying.

Comments

[Dr. Zorba]

Boulanger-Crider is an android-like amalgam of mindlessness and bullshit. To make it talk, merely pull on the string attached to its neck.

These creatures address solely their partisans: roughly 1/3 of the completely witless 1/5 of Americans for whom words have no independent meaning.