Prepare for further smears of Pelosi

I'd been ignoring, for the most part, the transparent attacks on Nancy Pelosi, but since she'll be in the state tomorrow, let's allow Greg Sargent of TPMCafe to walk us through what we can expect from Washington state surrogates for the national GOP. (Obviously, he wrote his post in a general context about the GOP talking points, but it's current and illustrative.)

There are three key things about it worth noting. First, check out how neatly its message on the bogus Pelosi-to-Syria story dovetails with the way in which some of the big news orgs covered the story. Two now-infamous editorials about the trip -- one in The Washington Post and the other in USA Today -- are prominently featured by the RNC here. You'd think that might prompt a bit of embarrassment on the part of the two papers' edit boards -- they played along so closely with the GOP spin on this story that their work is now integral to the RNC's case against Pelosi.

Second, note the heavy reliance on other, similar smears and outright falsehoods: The memo accuses Pelosi and the Dems of "delaying emergency war funds," which has nothing to do with what happened in the real world, which is that the Dems have passed a troop funding bill in both Houses of Congress. It also contains the obligatory reference to Pelosi's alleged desire to take a trip to Iran -- with no mention of course of the fact that Pelosi's spokespeople have been on record for nearly 24 hours now saying unequivocally that she isn't taking a trip to Iran.

Finally, and perhaps most important, note the virtual absence of criticism of any of the House Dems' actual legislative agenda. The only references to anything of substance are the misrepresentation of the troop funding bill and a reference to the House Dems' tax policies. No reference whatsoever to anything done during the first 100 days. In other words, the GOP has virtually nothing at all to hit the House Dems with aside from the thoroughly phony "controversies" that have been ginned up by a compliant media all too willing to amplify the GOP's crudest talking points.

You know some of the same baloney will surface tomorrow. It's really pretty sad how badly the Republicans have sunk. They always used misinformation rather effectively, but now that dubious skill seems to have eluded them as well. As a last resort, they could always try the truth. (Okay, and I could win eleventy billion dollars and fly to Mars....)