Tales from The Trunk

Longtime p3 correspondent Doctor Beyond has fine-tuned the science of sending the smallest donation possible to the GOP that will still keep him on their emailing list for fund-raising pleas, etc. Currently, he reports that it only takes $5 to stay in the game for a year.

He does it partly for the perverse pleasure of it, but mostly for surveillance purposes. A lot of the materials he gets this way aren't available to anyone else (unless a mole forwards it, like in this case).

As a case in point, consider The Weekly Trunk, an emailing from the Republican National Committee, that links to right-wing commentators and blogs (plus occasional straight-news articles) and provides a snarky bumper-sticker headline followed by a sentence or two of spin for each. For example:

Air Force "The One"
First it was Nancy Pelosi treating the Air Force like her personal airline -- now Barack Obama and an "unusually large number of people traveling with the president" are straining our ability to operate in Afghanistan. (Bill Gertz, "Military Strained by Obama Trip," The Washington Times, 4/2/09)

(Good lord--they're still recycling that bogus story from 2007 about Nancy Pelosi and the jet? Seriously?)

A typical edition includes about a dozen of those. The Trunk's stated goal, placed at the top of the page, is:

to inform and arm you with the facts you need to spread our conservative message and refute the misstatements of the Democrats.

Odd, what with it containing information and facts and all, that you can't find it on the gop.com web site. Apparently access to information and facts--or, more appropriately, <air quotes>information and facts</air quotes>--is restricted to paying customers, who get it via email. Even the ones in the cheap seats.

I didn't have the time or motivation to do a full-on fact check of the most recent edition that Doctor B forwarded to me (for the fun of watching from a distance as it set me off, I'll wager), but quickly running my eye down the page wasn't encouraging. Some samples:

Democrats Charting Course for Davy Jones' Locker
It's becoming painfully clear how irresponsible and damaging the Democrats' pie-in-the-sky spending spree is. (Mona Charen, "The Ship is Sinking: Quick, Add Water: Paying for the Democrats' Dream Agenda," NationalReviewOnline, 4/1/09)

Or:

Is it The White House, or Romper Room?
Can we have our cake and eat it, too? In Barack Obama's Lala-land, the answer is "Yes We Can!" (Ben Shapiro, "Obama's Childish Vision of Politics," Townhall.com, 4/1/09)

The particular item that pushed Doctor Beyond's button--reducing him to one-word heavy sarcasm--was this:

Party of "No?" Try Party of Common Sense
Republicans in Washington are offering a sound budget plan of cutting taxes and freezing spending -- will the Democrats listen? (Newsfront, "GOP Budget: Growth With Tax Cuts, Spending Freeze," Newsmax.com, 4/1/09)

But I think my own favorite would have to be this one:

Make Sense to You?
In the upside-down worldview of modern leftists, President Obama's performance is exactly what they would expect. (Victor Davis Hanson, "President Obama's First 70 Days: It Really Does All Make Sense," NationalReviewOnline, 4/1/09)

You can go read the NRO article yourself if you're so inclined. I just want to talk about this little blurb from The Weekly Trunk. Remove the pejorative "upside-down" and take the word "leftist" with the appropriate grain of salt (as I write, Arlen Specter is facing a likely 2010 GOP primary challenge because he's not far enough to the right), and what does it leave?

President Obama is doing the things that the people who voted for him wanted him to do!

And this is the horror that the RNC uses to whip up the crowd? Truly amazing. They really don't get that America's just not that into them anymore.