The Country's Going to Hell in a Handbasket, and all the GOP Can Talk About Is Lipstick and Pigs?

Editor's note: Tom Degan, everyone's favorite AlterNet commenter, posted this ... rant to his blog, The Rant.

Consider this: The American economy is on the verge of collapse. Lives are being lost on a daily basis in a two-front war. Our infrastructure is coming apart. Hundreds of thousands of people all across this troubled land are losing their jobs not to mention their homes. As I write these words, the city of Houston, Texas is being destroyed by Hurricane Ike. With all this going on, what do you think these silly, half-witted Republicans have the entire country debating? Lipstick on a pig.

As the late, great Jack Parr used to say, "I kid you not".

The "controversy" (if that's what you want to call it) revolves around Barack Obama's description earlier this week of John McCain's economic policies:

"You can put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig."

"SEXISM!" screamed the loony right wing, "That's a direct smear of the vice-presidential candidate! How cruel! How thoughtless! How could he? The poor woman! Oh, the poor, poor woman!"

I think that it reveals a lot about what they really think of their V.P. nominee. The moment the word "pig" escaped Obama's lips, the first thing that came to their minds was Sarah Palin. Very interesting indeed.

This is straight out of the Karl Rove Playbook: Distract, distort and divide. They obviously can't discuss "the issues", so to speak; they can't run on the basis of their ideas because their ideas (or, rather, their "ideology") is atrocious. So, what to do? Create a controversy out of think air. Ignore the fact that if you google the phrase, "lipstick on a pig", you will be able to find a score or more of Republican politicians using those words in the last year alone. Ignore the fact that the title of the book written by John McCain's former (and female) press secretary was "Lipstick on a Pig". Ignore the fact that when asked last year about Hillary Clinton's plan for health care, the Arizona senator himself inarticulately replied, "The latest proposal I see is putting lipstick on a pig".

Forget all of that. Just ignore it.