Name-Calling You Can Believe In

I have to admit that a legitimate criticism of this blog might be that I spend most of my time here criticizing my opponents instead of offering something constructive. I feel a little guilty about that some time. Only amateurs whine like this. Thank God I'm not in charge of anything.

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these days.

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

Steele is wrong of course - it will allow the media to accurately characterize Republicans.

And it's an emergency session! If we don't officially codify these slurs right now, we'll never win back all those seats in 2010! They better not forget to officially misspell "Barney Fwank" or they'll just have to drop everything again next month.

I suspect that some time soon some guy will notice that playing to the base like this is just leading to a smaller base. And that guy will be called a RINO and forbade to attend meetings.