Has anyone else noticed this pattern to events?
Step 1. The Bush administration does something so stupid, incompetent, or corrupt that even main stream Americans may notice.
Step 2. Karl Rove steps in and the GOP/Fox news/other minions of the right accuse a Democrat for doing the very same thing. They use an easy-to-remember term.
Step 3. By the time people wake up to the wrong-doings of the GOP in power, the Democrats are already tarred by association with the deed, or bad character trait.
Here are some examples:
-Right before the CIA cuts funding for the "find Osama" branch, the GOP accuses Democrats of "Cutting and Running" in Iraq. Did they also not "cut and run" at Tora Bora, or in the country of Afghanistan overall?
-Calling John Kerry a flip-flopper, when Bush ran his 2000 campaign on isolationism, and remember at the time he also stated a committment to alternative sources of energy.
-Calling the left vitriolic.....I mean, just look at Ann Coulter.
-The swift-boat fiasco, when by rights Bush should not have been able to touch Kerry on military service.
-Calling congressional Democrats unorganized and incompetent, when the Bush administration can't hire a decent ambassador to the UN or a qualified head of FEMA.
-My personal favorite, calling the Democrats soft on terrorism. Bill Clinton was obsessed with terrorism. Bush has been incompetent on his war on terror, which has increased globally since 9/11.
Where it isn't working:
-An army of talking heads are trying to paint the scientific consensus on climate change as a "war on science" Sorry Karl, but Chris Mooney got there before you.
-Blaming the UN for corruption/and undermining it's authority on the one hand, while trying to work with it on North Korea on the other hand.
-Immigration.
The problem that I see is that these superficial boxes that Karl Rove is so good at putting his enemies into are temporary. They only last through an election. These characterizations, when false, don't last. But the truth will stick to the GOP for decades, like Watergate.
Eventually they are fucked.