SPLITTERS!

From the movie, "Life of Brian:"

REG:

Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f**king Judean People's Front.

P.F.J.:

Yeah...

JUDITH:

Splitters.

P.F.J.:

Splitters...

FRANCIS:

And the Judean Popular People's Front.

P.F.J.:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...

LORETTA:

And the People's Front of Judea.

P.F.J.:

Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...

REG:

What?

LORETTA:

The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.

REG:

We're the People's Front of Judea!

LORETTA:

Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.

I was talking to my mother last night. My mom, and anybody who knows me would be shocked, actually supports the same candidate I do, namely Rudy. She is very worried about the threats made by much of the Religious Right to bolt the GOP if Rudy is the nominee. And Mom has always been Miss Christian, quite dismayed at her Pagan daughter.

I think she doesn't have anything to worry about, as long as everybody remembers who and what the GOP is facing in 2008, and keeps their eyes on the prize.

Religious Right types? I want you to close your eyes and visualize your perfect 2008 candidate. Now visualize the Clintons' bought-and-paid-for smear machine getting ahold of him. They will find anything they can on your guy and flog it all over the news.

And what they don't find, they will try and make up. The only reason the TANG documents were revealed to be fakes in time for the 2004 election was because the forger used a blatantly anachronistic font. If our forger had enough clue to switch to Courier (yes I know the spacing would still be wrong, but that's a much harder case to make), John Kerry would be President.

Never bet the farm on your opponent's stupidity, as reliable as it may seem. Your ideal candidate may be squeaky clean, but one deliberate misquote, one really good Photoshopping session, one really good document forgery, and he's toast.

So the GOP got a clue: If your candidate is gay-friendly, there's no point in "outing" his campaign manager. If your candidate has owned up to past or current pro-choice views, there's no point in digging up a past speech espousing those views. If he publishes his own embarassing photos, he puts the Photoshoppers out of a job.

Fortunately, it seems most folks on the right, religious or no, have gotten that clue.

Look at the folks who go all over the Dextrosphere claiming otherwise. Then check their post count and post history. And don't forget the mobys are out there. This is not saying there aren't legitimate conservatives with a beef against Rudy, just that I think some of this alleged dissent is overblown.