One of Karl Rove's time tested techniques is freudian projection -- accuse the other guy of doing what you are actually guilty of. The Affordable Care Act tries to cut excess expense from Medicare, so the Democrats are trying to take away your Medicare, never mind the Paul Ryan budget and decades of attacks on Medicare by the GOP. FDL had this post illustrating this tactic vis a vis Obama's supposed enemies list. And Chait contributed to this body of knowledge with an October 2010 illustration of Turdblossom at work imploring Obama not to go negative lest he damage his prisitine reputation. Chait's TNR piece ends with this astounding reference to another campaign long ago forgotten:
If you haven't read Green account of the 1994 Alabama judicial race, you really must. The short story is that Rove's candidate was running against a judge known for helping troubled youth. Rove turned that apparent virtue into a liability by spreading rumors that the opponent was a pedophile. He is quite a specimen.
Which brings us to today's example that Paul Krugman had to flag before he left for Europe.
You see, some knuckleheads were distorting this wonkish analysis of WW II's impact on the US job market to argue that Krugman was advocating that we go to war. In today's post he refers to commenters taking that position. This is one of those looney commenters:
Yes, Paul. Another war is exactly what the economy needs. And the bigger and more deadly, the better. Obviously destroying things is the best way to create wealth, so shouldn't we be pushing for perpetual war? Good thing Obama agrees, too, as evidenced by his warmongering. But why stop there? Let's really get this economy rolling....how about nuclear war? Talk about boom times!!!
You are a sociopath.
So I started thinking. Given that Rovian projection is now taken for granted as a time tested GOP tactic, isn't it pretty apparent that if a GOP'er wins in 2012, we'll see the drums beating for a new conflict about three hours after inauguration. You know that this will definitely be the case if Bachman or Perry wins. Most likely Romney too. Look out Tehran, bombs away. Boys (and girls) instead of leaving Baghdad, just head east into Iran.
Of course the two current wars were not terribly stimulative. In part we didn't have to spend major dollars to arm up because we already had a ton of stuff lying around. Also, There was no substantial uptick in employment because we already had a lot of paid soldiers. A trillion dollars later we've got no economic stimulus to show for it.
Nonetheless, a good old fashioned war would be beneficial to the right in a myriad of other ways. It would stifle dissent, and maybe even let them supersize the Patriot Act. American exceptionalism would again be front and center in our foreign policy. And of course we could distract the masses from the abysmal economic conditions that led to Obama's defeat, and the fact that our new right wing President has no solutions for them.
This is going to get ugly. You heard it here first but I so hope I'm wrong.