Good news and bad news

My cat got another campaign missive from Ed Gillespie this morning.

The good news is in an utter panic about this new Kitty Kelly book, they started denying them to people who probably haven't even heard the rumors yet. And now they have.

The campaign is bringing in a bevy of former Clinton henchmen, including CNN commentators James Carville and Paul Begala. In August alone, Begala called President Bush a "gutless wonder," said he has a "lack of intelligence," and called Vice President Cheney a "dirt bag." Carville said the President is "ignorant big time" and said "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a couple of nobodies."

Of course, the President was called a "cheap thug," a "killer" and a "liar" at a Kerry-Edwards campaign event in New York, Mrs. Kerry has called the President's policies "unpatriotic" and "immoral" and DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe falsely accused the President of being AWOL.

Democratic strategist Susan Estrich outlined the strategy last Wednesday in a column warning Republicans to "watch out." "I'm not promising pretty," she wrote before going on to call President Bush and Vice President Cheney alcoholics, then ask "is any alcoholic ever really cured?" ("I can see the ad now.") She deems the President's service as a National Guard fighter pilot "draft dodging," and says, "a forthcoming book by Kitty Kelly raises questions about whether the President has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion." (Interestingly, the New York Daily News reported back in February that the Kerry campaign intended to spread such a rumor in pro-life chat rooms late in the campaign.)

So the former Dukakis campaign manager has an advance copy of Democrat donor Kitty Kelly's book, which promises to throw unsubstantiated gossip at President Bush in the same way she falsely maligned the late President Reagan as a date rapist who paid for a girlfriend's abortion and wrongly castigated Nancy Reagan as an adulterer who had an affair with Frank Sinatra. A recent story says Kelly's book alleges President Bush used cocaine at Camp David while his father was President, which is as credible as her story that then Governor and Nancy Reagan smoked marijuana with Jack Benny and George and Gracie Burns.

The bad news is that they are using the typical Rovian method of projection--claim that your opponents are doing what you in fact are doing to deflect attention. This letter repeatedly claims that the Kerry campaign is behind these rumors, which of course is just a projection of the way that the Bush administration is behind the Swift Boat Liars. The Kerry campaign isn't behind this; it's a bunch of really, really pissed off liberals like me who don't care anymore and have absolutely zero qualms about calling out hypocrites. Kerry isn't spreading rumors. But I am! I tell the story of Bush paying for his girlfriend's abortion every chance I get.

The really, really good news is no where in this letter is the rumor about Bush's homosexual liasons. Which I'm guessing right now means that even in the flailing desperation, they remembered that to deny a rumor is to repeat it. Which I'm guessing means that as Steve Gilliard predicted, that one is going to be the big one that's going to cost him the hardline right wing vote. I guess I can see that--as I repeatedly point out, the abortion debated is a covert way to speak about male power, and if Bush paid a girlfriend to get an abortion and go away he wasn't violating the precepts of that power. But if he has ever sucked a cock, it's going to cause that wedge issue of homophobia that he and his have been massaging for so long to blow up in his face.

And the best, best, best part about if the gay rumors get legs, then certain right-wingers can pretty much be counted on not to be able to resist spreading the rumors themselves. Andrew Sullivan and Matt Drudge won't be able to contain themselves, albeit for slightly different reasons.

Edited to add: Both World O'Crap and Steve Gilliard posted this letter on their blogs. *happy dance* We can't rely on the right to keep the whispers alive, people. If this gets loud enough, Bush will probably lose his temper on camera or something and it's over.