Falling Flat Because They Were Never Inflated

It's something of an interesting question why the Swiftboat-style attacks on Barack Obama have gotten no traction this year. Ari Berman does a scholarly analysis in The Nation. It could be the general lack of desire for irrelevant attacks at a time of financial crisis; it could be that the implosion of the conservative movement has fractured the message; it could be that the money simply isn't there to back John McCain; it could even be that the Obama campaign counter-punched effectively and refused to allow these attacks to get traction.

I think it has something to do with the utter stupidity of this year's attacks. Jon Swift, the reasonable conservative, has the definitive list of election-year blogging from conservatives. Bloggers are pretty important in amplifying attacks, and look what they've gone after this year:

During Obama’s dark, mysterious years at Columbia, he was involved in domestic terrorist bombings

Although some mainstream media sources have alluded to Obama’s mysterious years at Columbia, only one intrepid reporter, Tom Maguire of Just One Minute has made the cognitive leap required to connect all of the dots. Noting that Obama admitted in his book Dreams of My Father that he was “interested in South Africa divestment,” Maguire does some digging and discovers that some protests against the 1981 tour by the South African Springboks rugby team resulted in violence and even some bombings. Guess who “was involved in some fashion” in these bombings? The Weather Underground! “These are just dots and it may be impossible to connect them,” says Maguire, modestly, “but we have Barack Obama at Columbia working on South African divestment (as were many peaceful protestors) while other radical elements with a Weather Underground flavor are setting bombs, killing cops, and working on South African divestment. As a bonus, Bill Ayers is studying at Bank Street College a quarter mile from Columbia.” Wow! How can the mainstream media possibly ignore the fact that Obama must have been “involved in some fashion” in domestic terrorism because he was “interested in South African divestment.” “Tom Maguire steps pretty far out on a limb with this bit of speculation,” says CPAC Blogger of the Year Ace of Spades, who links to the story. “But it would explain why Barack Obama's ‘lost years’ at Columbia have remained so very very secret.” It makes me wonder how my friend Tom Watson, who was at Columbia at the same time as Obama and was also “interested in South African divestment,” was connected to the Weather Underground, not to mention hundreds of other former Columbia students who today freely walk the streets despite their terrorist connections. I wonder if Tom has mentioned his radical connections in his upcoming book CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World, or if like Obama, he mysteriously left it out.

That's just one of them. It's must reading and really a seminal document. Americans may not have the smartest bullshit detector, but they can ferret out complete ridiculousness. And that accurately describes the conservative movement in 2008.