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	The Republican Smear Machine	8/28/2005

Karl Rove, President of the Republican Smear Machine

When Cindy Sheehan first showed up outside George Bush's ranch demanding a sit-down, did you think George's friends wouldn't dare to impugn the patriotism or integrity of a mother whose son was an American soldier killed in Iraq? You naive namby-pamby ninny. You probably thought that about John Kerry and Max Cleland, too, didn't you? Anyone who criticizes any aspect of this administration's performance is branded a terrorist-loving member of the Hate America Club. One thing you won't hear from the Republican Smear Machine is any response to the criticism that caused them to erupt in the first place. These are people who can't defend their actions or their war that was sold on a stack of lies, incompetently planned and made Iraq a recruiting center for the real Hate America Club.

The President of the Republican Smear Machine is Karl Rove. Karl is a long-time friend of George's who's been engaged in political slime maneuvering for years. He is the protégé of the late, unlamented Lee Atwater, who crafted the Willie Horton campaign for George Bush Senior. Karl, who surely spent his youth getting his ass kicked on the playground every day, has the perfect emotional make-up to head the Smear Machine. He's devious, mean-spirited and manipulative, as well as having an uncanny ability to assign blame for his actions to someone else, just like another one of his heroes, Eddie Haskell. Karl's project to smear Joseph Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA agent blew up in his face, but thus far the only one in jail for it is one of his lackeys in the press.

Here's how the Smear Machine works: Every morning Karl gets up and scans the report of Sins Against the Empire compiled by his agencies and spies. He puts together a fax, listing the sinners in all their evil glory, as well as what the Talking Points of the Day are to be:

Yeah, her son got killed but she doesn't speak for me.
Yeah, her son got killed but Cindy Sheehan is in bed with Joan Baez and Jane Fonda.
Yeah, her son got killed but she's providing aid and comfort to terrorists everywhere and Osama bin Laden gets a hard on whenever he sees her on TV which causes him to go out and hump camels all night long. Male camels.

Karl sends his fax to the Goose Stepping Gasbags, that sad collection of talk radio and Fox News pundits (each of them a chickenhawk) who will repeat the Talking Points of the Day in unison over and over again until even the dumbest of their listeners can repeat them verbatim. The Goose Steppers divide up the target audience according to their strengths:

Rush Limbaugh goes for the degenerate-drug-addict crowd.
William Bennett goes for the degenerate-gambler crowd.
Bill O'Reilly goes for the degenerate-sexual-predator-with-a-falafel crowd.
Michael Savage goes for the act-like-a-homophobic-lunatic-because-I'm-actually-a-flaming-faggot crowd.
Pat Robertson goes for the Christian Taliban crowd.

By the end of the day, Karl's message has been accepted by the True Believers as gospel. Lacking the ability or inclination to think for themselves, these guys are like tanker trucks full of gasoline ($2.89 per gallon) with the tops missing. All it takes is one well-aimed spark from the Republican Smear Machine and you have some drooling wanker blasting his shotgun at Cindy as he declares it's time for dove hunting season. Then Karl shrugs his shoulders and says it's a shame. Until tomorrow's fax when he names the new sins and sinners.

They promised us weapons of mass destruction before the war and rose petals in our path after the war. 1,800 American deaths and thousands of injuries and $200 billion later, we still haven't seen any sign of either one of them. We won't be seeing Cindy's Sheehan son Casey anymore either. Casey didn't die in vain; he died for right of Karl and the Republican Smear Machine to attack his mother.

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