I Call "Bullshit!"

Let me get this straight: Republican National Committee finance director Rob Bickhart's staff put together a 72-page PowerPoint presentation on RNC fundraising plans for 2010, and included in it tasteless-but-seen-all-over images of Barack Obama as The Joker and easy-to-mock language about donor motivation. The staff printed hard copies of the PowerPoint and handed them out in advance of a meeting, and one of a dozen men and women who heard the presentation in Florida two weeks ago left a hard copy of the presentation in the hotel. Ben Smith at Politico got his hands on the document, his editors splashed it across the front page under an "EXCLUSIVE" banner, and next thing you know, the air was full of the caterwauling of the Left's professional caterwaulers, the Right was heading for the hills, former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough wanted Bickhart fired, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele sent out his new communications director to throw Bickhart under the bus.

In addition to the offensive images of Obama as The Joker, the document included a slide entitled "motivation to give," which included, for low-dollar donors, "fear," and, for high-dollar donors, "wall of fame," "peer-to-peer pressure," and "ego-driven."

Is there anyone reading this blog post who is not aware that much of direct mail marketing is based on appeals to the fear that already exists in a certain segment of the target audience?

Is there anyone reading this blog post who is not aware that high-dollar donors like being stroked? And that often times that stroking includes having their picture taken with Important Personages, so said photos can be mounted on the wall of the den at home -- the "wall of fame?"

Is there anyone reading this blog post who is not aware that wealthy donors call their friends all the time and use peer-to-peer pressure to raise money for their favored charities, and that wealthy donors -- many of them being successful personages on their own -- can often be ego-driven?

No, no, no, and no. Then why all the fuss?

And more importantly for our discussion, why haven't there been more Republicans calling "bullshit!" on this?

Thank God for Tom Davis.

Davis, the former liberal Republican Congressman from Virginia's 11th District, seemed to be one of only two identified Republicans who had the gumption to call the whole kerfluffle exactly what it was -- much ado about nothing:

“I’ve been in politics over 40 years. Why would I be shocked by this,” said former GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia. “Nobody wants to be associated with this, but this is something I’ve seen all the time,” he said. “Fundraising is never easy, it’s never pretty…this goes on routinely and they do it because it’s successful.”

Davis explained that fundraisers in both parties will do just about anything to fire up their donors. “You do it through humor and some raw meat,” he said. “They want to pretend they don’t do this stuff, but I’m afraid I’ve seen it all too often.”

Todd Harris, who shows up regularly on Chris Matthews' "Hardball," said it even more succinctly, calling the controversy "manufactured."

Here's something that's been totally overlooked in all the discussion of this PowerPoint presentation -- it's a PowerPoint presentation.

That is, this is not a narrative document, this is a hard copy printout of a slide show.

It is not meant to be read as a stand-alone document, it is meant to be seen as the visual accompaniment to what someone is saying.

i don't know about you, but when i do a slide show, i use the graphics to punctuate my narrative. Often -- more often than not -- the images and words that appear onscreen at various points of the slide show are meant to be punchlines.

But of course, viewing the document in this light makes it far less offensive, because even a close reader cannot tell for sure exactly what the words on the screen are punctuating -- and without that certainty, there's less reason to be offended.

Nevertheless, MSNBC hosts have been orgasmic for the last 48 hours. They must be passing out towels and cigarettes over there like John Edwards passing out his home phone number at a Michael Bolton/Kenny G double bill.

They can't seem to understand the difference between recognizing fear that already exists in a subset of the electorate and manufacturing fear that wasn't already there.

The RNC -- like every other party committee, both Democrat and Republican -- doesn't manufacture fear, it takes advantage of fear that already exists.

You want to see an attempt to manufacture fear? Try this one on for size: In this 1964 television ad for Lyndon Johnson's campaign against Barry Goldwater, the female narrator virtually accuses Goldwater of wanting to kill little girls by bathing them in radioactive isotopes:

Do you know what people used to do? They used to explode atomic bombs in the air.

Now, children should have lots of Vitamin A and Calcium, but they shouldn't have any Strontium 90 or Cesium 137.

These things come from atomic bombs, and they're radioactive. They can make you die.

Do you know what people finally did?

They got together and signed a nuclear test ban treaty, and the the radioactive poison started to go away.

But now, there's a man who wants to be President of the United States, and he doesn't like this treaty. He fought against it. He even voted against it.

He wants to go on testing more bombs.

His name is Barry Goldwater, and if he's elected, they might start testing all over again.

Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.

That is manufacturing fear.

In the meantime, how many people have actually read all 72 pages of the document? I have. And what's truly remarkable about it isn't that it used an image of Obama-as-Joker grabbed from the web (I just did a Google search on the image "Obama as Joker" and was returned 305,000 search results in .20 seconds), but that it was so ... standard. Unsurprising. Unremarkable.

It's no wonder the Left has beaten up Bickhart like a pinata. With health care reform on the verge of total collapse, they have to do something to distract us from the sausage-making that's taking place.

But what is the Right's excuse for not fighting back on this? For the life of me, I cannot figure this one out.