One of my very favorite political blogs, the Carpetbagger,
has an item today about Bush's latest smears against Democrats on national security during a series of campaign events yesterday. It's the usual bleating: weak-willed, passive, waiting to get hit again, and deedle-deedle-dee.
Carpetbagger has a laugh at Bush's growing irrelevance, but I think he somewhat misses the point that when Bush makes these appearances--always sheltered so he's just speaking to the faithful, with pre-canned and probably pre-queued applause lines--the real point isn't what he says, but what he does. What he did yesterday, in making his dim remarks, was raise $400,000 for Richard Pombo, the thuggish Republican congressman from California. Later, he raised $600,000 for the Dickensian-named (and, of course, corrupt) Congressman John Doolittle, and still later he raised $1.3 million at an RNC event. The Pombo appearance triggered a protest of about 150 administration opponents, which merited a one-line mention in the Yahoo! story from which I drew this information.
What I want to know is why we can't, or don't, have a mobile operation run either by the DNC or the two congressional campaign committees, or by an independent group, that shadows Bush when he makes these appearances. I see two big benefits from such an operation:
1) Use the heightened level of Democratic/progressive disgust at having the First Asshole in town to raise some coin for the local opponents of whoever Bush is fund-raising for.
2) Conduct "War Room"-style rapid response to get our message into the local press and rebut the inevitable lies and half-truths that Bush's monkeys pen for him to spout.
Basically, such a rolling effort should provide support for the local candidates, who themselves can give the quotes and otherwise go on point as "standing up to the President." Given that majorities distrust Bush--and that progressives just loathe the guy--an aggressive pushback to his appearances will force the recipients of his largesse either to tie themselves to an unpopular president and perceived failure, or to disassociate themselves, which in turn will lessen their support from the RNC.
Am I naive and is this being done already? If not, why the hell not?