Keeping Them Viable

by digby

Far be it for me to be suspicious of the Kewl Kidz of Village High, but I have noticed an odd phenomenon in the past week or so that makes me wonder if those clever kids aren't doing a little GOP prep work for the general election.

Isn't it a little bit weird that we are suddenly seeing a bunch of articles about the liberal records of Republican candidates in the mainstream press? I realize that they are running in conservative primaries and these articles may be planted by rivals, but if I were a GOP pooh bah I might think it was important not to let stories of GOP candidates' bloodthirstiness and fundamentalism get too embedded in the public consciousness. After all, the money people have already decided that they need a "different kind of Republican" who can win over some moderates this time out. We wouldn't be seeing Blue State Mitt and Big City Rudy (with Compassionate Conservative Huck on the rise) if they didn't know that this is one election where running as a conservative in the general is likely to be the kiss of death.

Hence, we see David Brooks trying to convince the readers of the NY Times that Rudy really loves immigrants. We see the Prince of Darkness telling everyone who will listen that Huckabee is far too liberal. And we had that bizarre "realignment" talk from William Kristol a couple of weeks ago where he was pushing for the nominee to bring Lieberman on the ticket.

The surrogates are all doing their jobs to preserve the GOP candidates' viability after they get the rabid neanderthals in line with appeals to the right of Atilla the Hun. But I don't know if they can maintain all this winking and nodding all the way to next November. It's going to get a little bit confusing after a while trying to tell "Red State Rudy" from "Blue State Rudy" and all that dogwhistling going in both directions is liable to make everybody howl.


.