Chad Scarborough is one of the least self-aware people I have met in print. He begins his column by listing a bunch of faux scandals (ObamaCare, Benghazi, the IRS), plus a real one at the NSA. But then he immediately begins complaining that the Romney campaign never developed a unified theme for their campaign and, instead, careened from one “wild, disjointed accusation” to another. As Billmon put it, “The guy is bitching about the RW echo chamber — from inside the RW echo chamber. And he doesn’t even realize it.”
Scarborough could have added ACORN, the birth certificate, Fast & Furious, Solyndra, and Shirley Sherrod to his list of “scandals” that the Obama administration has easily weathered because they were not scandals at all. In fairy tales, this one is explained by The Boy Who Cried Wolf. If you tell a bunch of lies, eventually no one will believe you when you’re telling the truth and it matters. This is also true of Karl Rove and Dick Morris, whose lies and overconfidence left big Republican donors feeling like gullible marks. They aren’t giving their money to the Super PACs anymore (Dem groups are out-raising them 2-to-1).
In any case, it’s hard to have a unified message when your party isn’t unified. They rallied around obstructing Obama’s first term, but all that did was produce a cacophony of cow manure. Just think about it. The party of John McCain doesn’t want to have much to do with the party of Mitt Romney; the party of Mitt Romney doesn’t want to have much to do with the party of Rand Paul, and the party of Rand Paul wants to have nothing whatsoever to do with the party of John McCain. Deep seams have emerged, and no Super PAC can smooth them over merely by devising a clever messaging campaign, whether it speaks directly to the American people or not.
