The Purpose Driven Ratfuck

by digby

I haven’t written about the ACORN thing because the fact is that some ACORN workers got punk’d by a couple of preppie GOP ratfuckers and until the smoke cleared, there wasn’t going to be any point in discussing the larger issues at stake. And after ACORN’s credibility had been attacked non-stop for years, people were all too ready to look at that footage and draw the conclusion that the organization was some sort of lowlife criminal enterprise.

It was utterly predictable that CNN would belatedly “report” this morning that there are a lot of questions about the videos and that there are many examples of people who behaved differently when the ratfuckers approached them, but that after so many people have seen the videos, the damage is done. (see Cokie’s Law.)

It’s easy to blame ACORN employees for their bad judgment — the videos are embarrassing — but it’s also important not to throw in the towel and grant the conservative ratfuckers the moral high ground. The reason they did this wasn’t to excuse “lawbreaking” at ACORN. It was to discredit an organization that successfully registers black and Hispanic citizens to vote. We’ve discussed the Republicans’ sophisticted vote suppression program at length on this blog over the years and with their new minority status, I would assume this is more important to their hopes for an electoral resurgence than ever since they have little hope of enticing racial and ethnic minorities to their side, (particularly after their behavior of the past couple of months.)

The problem, as usual, is the Democrats, who are simply incapable of protecting their own political futures. Per Howie:

Huge victory for Glenn Beck! Only 75 Democrats had the guts to stand up for ACORN today when the not-so-hapless Republican minority forced through a motion by GOP crook Darrell Issa (R-CA) to defund the organization. This is so pathetic– and a true vision of the Republican idea of bipartisanship (even worse, if you can imagine than the rancid kind of bipartisanship corrupt Democrats like Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson are always pumping for). I want to especially congratulate the Blue Dog coalition, Steny Hoyer, and the freshmen we helped elect who see nothing wrong in selling out our allies in a tough time. Here’s the list of the ones who didn’t sell out. read on

And Obama backed them up today …

(I would compare this to how the Republicans reacted when the Democrats tried to disable one of their important political allies. They gathered their forces, defended their guy and the resolution went absolutely nowhere.)

In this case, I would guess this is only the beginning of a long campaign to subliminally draw Obama into some sort of “welfare queen” series of scandals that will discredit him with a bunch of “where there’s smoke there’s fire, doesn’t pass the smell test” innuendo. If they can get him caught up in legal issues, all the better. This stuff operates on a lizard brain level and it’s important to speak to the lizard brain when refuting it as well.

The Dems could have fought this out on the merits, but they didn’t. Apparently, they are so damaged from years of constantly being called unpatriotic Jesus haters that when they are called something nonsensical like “reverse racists” they just reflexively flinch and start apologizing. It’s absurd. They just do not have any capacity to stare down criticism and cut off scandal mongering no matter how much it hurts them in the long run.

.