Where Have All The Bogeymen Gone?

It started, I think, with Rush Limbaugh.  Then came the Tea Party movement.  Then it was Armus.  Then they resurrected George W. Bush.  Then it was on to John Boehner.

Democrats are utterly lost without an external object of hatred toward which they can demagogue public anger properly directed at them and their malevolent, anti-American agenda.  Their compulsive need for one in an Obamatopian age in which that fetish, like tears and conservativism themselves, was supposed to wither away and vanish like a butterfly's chrysalis has caught even them by surprise.  Little did they realize the totality of their dependence upon George W. Bush to distract the American public from the essence of what they are and stand for.  So cometh this desperate search, like a political American Idol, for The Next Right-Wing Scapegoat, that resembles a Little-Billy-from-the-Family-Circus meandering path-track.

Much like Felix Under ending up on Oscar Madison's doorstep, Dems turned back to Bush because they literally had nowhere else to go.  Beating up that punching bag always worked for them in the past, and besides, it's like sex - something they never get tired of.

Except....it's two years later, Bush is more popular than The One, House Democrats are morphing into foxhole supply-siders, and just how the heck DO you run against the president whose signature economic policy your minions now want to ape?:

Democrats are undercutting their campaign message by condemning Republican economic policies while calling for the extension of Bush-era tax cuts.

“It’s hard to say the Republican economic policies were bad, [and] then continue them,” Paul Begala, Democratic strategist and former advisor to President Clinton, told The Hill. “That is a bit of a mixed message.” ….

[T]here’s growing momentum within the party to extend cuts on those with higher incomes too given the stubborn recession. Moody’s Analytics economist Mark Zandi, who has advised Democrats on the economy, this week said congressional leaders should extend all of the tax cuts to reduce the risk of a double-dip recession.

Even extending only the tax cuts for the middle class undercuts the Democratic argument a bit, said Democratic strategist Douglas Schoen, by making it difficult for liberal leaders to say Bush’s tax policies had a toxic affect on the economy.

“If the whole campaign is based on blasting Bush, and Bush for giving away too much to the rich, it’s pretty hard to say that Bush was right [about the middle-class tax cuts],” Schoen said.

It's bloody impossible, actually.  It's a circle that won't square.  A geometic feat that would have stumped even Euclid.  A logic puzzle that would baffle Spock.  Can't.  Be.  Done.

That's why they tried going after John Boehner, which made the White House look like they were conceding the House to the GOP in November by trying to get a leg up on defining him as the New Newt Gingrich.  And in a way they succeeded - they built him up to be the Mr. Newt of 1994-early 1995 that whipped Sick Willie's ass so throughly the latter was forced to publicly and pathetically plead his "relevancy."  Not the Newt of 1996-98, the attempt of which proved to be yet another propaganda rake to the face.

So toward whom to the "hard pivot" now?  Christine O'Donnell!

Juuuuuust kidding.

But just a little: 

It was a telling moment at Senator Tom Harkin’s 33rd annual steak fry, where Mr. Plouffe, along with David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, came to try to dispel the predictions of a dismal November for Democrats. They promoted the party’s accomplishments, but they suggested that if members needed more enticement for Election Day, they should keep Ms. Palin and other Republicans at the forefront of the conversation.

“Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are bad enough, but they’re not the real Republican Party,” Mr. Plouffe said. “It is Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. That is the power. All of these Republican candidates have to pledge allegiance to them, their intolerance and their backwards thinking.”…

This year, Ms. Palin’s name came up again and again. She is set to make her first trip of the year to Iowa on Friday as the marquee speaker at the Republican Party’s annual Ronald Reagan Dinner, an appearance that will undoubtedly fuel a round of speculation — founded or not — about whether she intends to run for president in 2012…

“We asked Glenn Beck to estimate the size of the crowd. He said 500,000,” Mr. Harkin said, taking a swipe at the conservative television host who held a large rally last month in Washington. “We asked Sarah Palin. She said it was so big that she could see it from Wasilla.”

Um, okay.  What the heck, it's been, what, a few weeks since libtards demonized her and her family?  That's got to be the longest vacation the Palins have enjoyed away from the proverbial Obamunist propaganda barrel in over two years.  Good thing Harkin, Plouffe and Axelrod  (sounds like a gay legal firm) got this latest brainstorm - her tits were beginning to shrink.  A little campaign home stretch hatemongering will pump those torpedoes right back up again.

And, I think, it'll backfire just as trying to draw devil horns on the next Speaker did, but for a different reason.  Going after Boehner was "punching down" and sent a defeatist signal to Democrats about the election seven weeks from now.  Going after Sarahcuda from a position of weakness elevates her as well, not in terms of notoriety, but credibility and, yes, popularity.  The further into his presidency he wades, the more unpopular Barack Obama becomes.  Everything he blindly and religiously believes in is a fraud and a failure from which he will not deviate.  He's determined to raise taxes on the very "wealthy" that create private sector jobs, and thus to bury the U.S. economy even deeper in debt and economic misery.  When his approval numbers plunge into the thirties next year, and maybe even the twenties by the time 2012 dawns, won't Mrs. Palin and her unique mix of Reaganian sunny pro-American optimism and Thatcherian courage and iron-spined common sense start looking awfully good?

Yeah, I know, she's a quitter.  But there were those at the time she stepped down as Alaska Governor who argued that by the time 2012 rolled around, that resignation would be a distant, forgotten fart in Red Barry's hurricane of malaise and calamity.  More to the point, what else can they throw at her that they haven't hurled at her already?  Remember: Next time, Barry O will be the bogeyman.  Proving, if nothing else, that sooner or later, truth always catches up with hype.