It goes a little something like this. The right finds something that most reasonably intelligent and honest people wouldn't consider a big deal, or even interesting, that gives them an excuse to freak out. Without thinking, waiting for facts, or really using their brains, they work themselves up into a nice big rage and begin spewing the ugliest smears and lies they can imagine without any regard for the truth. Pretending all the while that their non-event is some big scandal that has the entire world outraged along side them.
The only outrage is in their fantasies, though. A little time passes by. People begin to notice the outrage that only exists on the right, wonder what it's all about, and then use their brains to find the truth. The truth is never what the right said it was, and when solid facts come out, the entire manufactured scandal blows up in their faces.
Rinse, repeat.
Since we're not dealing with reasonable people, they don't learn anything from the blunder. They just wait for something else to come along that they can blow up. Smear someone, pretend it's the end of the world, and hope some of the damage lasts longer than a few seconds.
That just happened again, and it was hilarious.
Jake Tapper caught President Obama on a hot mic telling Russian President Dimitry Medvedev that he'd be more flexible on George W. Bush's proposed missile shield for Poland and the Czech Republic – one of the former President's numerous foreign policy blunders that resulted in Russia threatening to freshly deploy nuclear weapons along its border with NATO countries in retaliation – after the 2012 election.
That's common sense to everyone who doesn't have any. A diplomatic incident this big isn't something you rush. Ever. For any reason.
So a moron writing at the small and worthless Brietbart.com (the site now has less traffic that the column you're reading) re-imagined that into "Obama Assures Putin: I'll Surrender America After I'm Re-elected".
When introduced to Newsvine, that story resulted in hundreds of hateful and ignorant comments that were even more absurd than the hit piece on Brietbart's failed website. "Hopefully the Republican candidates can lace up their track shoes and take this alarming statement and run with it", one person said. Unfortunately for a Republican base that despises President Obama personally – not really because of his politics – and desperately wants him gone next year, that's exactly what happened.
Not only did the online right embarrass itself yet again, the entire Republican Party followed them right off the cliff. The Republican National Committee quickly crafted and released a video featuring Fox News pundits who are already in the bag for the GOP and whoever the GOP nominee will be, adopting the smears: "If all of a sudden the president is suggesting he'll have more flexibility after the election, does that suggest he'll be giving up more to Russia? That is going to be the question he is going to face after a comment like this."
That wasn't a statement of fact so much as it was Ed Henry sharing his dirty fantasies with FNC viewers. De facto nominee and front-runner Mitt Romney also got in on the act, calling Russia the number one geopolitical foe of the United States, which is simply amazing ignorance since Russia is a strategic partner of the United States in so many ways that it'd need its own story to list them all. Not to mention the fact that the #1 enemy actor changes based on the daily needs of the GOP. Today it's Russia, yesterday it was Iran. Tomorrow it'll be China. The weekends are usually reserved for North Korea.
They all take turns, you see. Whenever the GOP needs to avoid talking about the improving economy that they tried to halt, they'll drag out something to make Americans piss their pants about. It helps then to have a relatively fresh face from time to time, so the rotating cast is a must.
Unfortunately for every idiot that jumped on this train, and as these fake scandals always do, it blew up in their faces. Even Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal couldn't bring itself to join this suicide mission. They spoke to Poland's negotiator with the Bush administration for the missile shield program, and he wasn't surprised at all by Obama's statements. A Polish lawmaker told the Journal "this is not surprising or new, and there's no outrage in Poland." He even addressed the core fear mongering talking point: "There's no military threat, and we haven't had a situation as secure as this in 300 years. The level of U.S. military engagement in Poland therefore isn't of top importance."
None of this should be surprising since the Obama administration's stance on the missile shield in Europe has been public knowledge since October of 2009.
One might come away with the impression that neither Joel Pollak nor any of the lemmings that followed him had the slightest clue what's been going on in this country for the past three years when it comes to foreign policy. But isn't that expected from the right-wing scandal machine? Isn't this always how these things end, blowing up in their faces because they concerned themselves with hysterical overreactions and smears instead of using their brains to sit down and discuss the issue like adults?
Pretty much.
