Except that the Bush gang took it one step further.

The car doesn't run too well, but it skids off the road perfectly, aims for the nearest tree unfailingly, and bursts into flames like a charm. In fact, merely looking at it decreases your life expectancy by a half. And the beauty is, 38 percent of Americans think it's a cool car worth every cent of its half trillion dollar price tag. (Latest AP-Ipsos poll.)

Selling crap is easy. Selling crap and making the buyer enjoy the taste, now that's genius of Rovian scale!

And we all know what the price tag would be (is).

Absolutely, I think that is right on the money. The republicans have a whole cadre of tactics that they use to successfully win elections. Wedge issues like abortion, gay marriage, flag burning, are standard issue tactics followed up with a healthy dose of dirty tricks like phone jamming seem to work quite well for them not to mention just plain old bald faced lies.

The democrats on the other hand--Amy Sullivan does a good job of helping to pinpoint their campaign woes.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.sullivan.html

Fire the consultants

If you were a Democrat running as a first-time candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2002, Joe Hansen was most likely a familiar part of your life. As the field director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Hansen was responsible for recruiting promising candidates, and then for getting the nascent campaigns off to a running start. In the first overwhelming days of your campaign, Joe was a lifeline. He took you out to dinner for pep talks, broke down the fundraising process into something almost manageable, walked you through the selection of campaign staff and consultants, and promised that--if you proved you were a serious candidate by putting together the right team--the DSCC would happily write the checks that might make the difference when things really heated up in the fall. And when it came to choosing just the right firm to design and produce the fliers, postcards, and door hangers that would blanket your state in the closing weeks of the campaign, Joe recommended the very best consultant he knew: Joe Hansen...

...What's most surprising, though, is that Democratic candidates continue to hire him despite his lousy record. After losing seven of nine close races in 2002, Hansen was again a man in demand during the last election cycle...

...Hansen is part of a clique of Washington consultants who, through their insider ties, continue to get rewarded with business even after losing continually. Pollster Mark Mellman is popular among Democrats because he tells them what they so desperately want to hear: Their policies are sound, Americans really agree with them more than with Republicans, and if they just repeat their mantras loud enough, voters will eventually embrace the party...

...After the party got its clock cleaned based on his advice, Mellman should have been exiled but was instead...promoted. He became the lead pollster for John Kerry's presidential campaign, where he proffered eerily similar advice--stress domestic policy, stay away from attacking Bush--to much the same effect...

* * *

Well, you get the idea, go ahead and read the whole column as it is worth a read though if you want to see the democrats win it is more than a bit depressing and you begin to wonder if they are as dense in the campaign department as they seem. It is rather odd though how world affairs turn on such seemingly seldom discussed details as campaign consultants. Just imagine no self destructive war in Iraq or no two pronged attack by Israel on its neighbors. How many dead people would be alive today if George Bush had been defeated the first time back in the day. Excuse me but I feel nauseated.

I'd trade our present foreign policy for a '75 Plymouth Valiant any day.

There are reasons why Confucius thought that merchants were at the bottom of the social ladder.

No, En Ming Hee, I'm serious; think about it:

if it was a '75 Valiant that was still running, it would probably run better than BushCo foreign policy, even if the valves were burnt;

and if it didn't run, it would have the virtue of just sitting there, causing no harm, unlike, say... BushCo foreign policy;

and if the city started grumbling about wanting me to tow it somewhere, the tow would be far less costly than, say...BushCo foreign policy.

Hey, didn't Eric Blair say all this decades ago in his language essays? You, of all people, should know.

Jonathan,

Would this new vehicle resemble the old Edsel that was a brainchild of that so-called genius Robert MacNamara when he almost ran FoMoCo into the ground back in the 1950s?

The Edsel would also have been preferable to BushCo foreign policy. It was only slightly more dangerous than the '75 Valiant, and only because of those menacing tail fins.