this kind of tripe is just the warm-up act.

You said it. It's a telling warm-up too; too bad we are more than likely going to fall into their traps.

Consider (it's long, but I think important):

1. The Republicans can't win on their own merits. They are identified with deeply unpopular policies and circumstances. Their nominee is unpopular with much of the base. The Dems are out-fundraising them by a huge margin. And parts of the electorate they have counted on, or failed entirely to assimilate, are deserting them.

2. Because they can't win, they have to make sure the Democrats lose. The playbook solution is a game of "Let's You and Him Fight". That is, leverage divisions within the Democratic party to get the Dems themselves to drive off the not-committed parts of the electorate that've started to migrate to their sides. These people can be flipped, but the Repugs can't do it. They have to get the Dems to do it for them.

3. The Repugs have been losing the South for some time, due to migration, demographic changes, changes in the patterns of economic development and poverty, and changes in attitudes about their red-meat issues. Ditto for economically hurt areas outside the South, e.g. southern Ohio, Michigan, California, rural Washington and Oregon, etc. National Dem politicians don't do always a great job of connecting with these people, and have not had much success speaking (authentically, you might say) either to them or about them.

But studying the dynamic between the Obama-Clinton campaigns, Repugs can see an opportunity to drive a wedge. Just to use one example, we've seen Dems label anyone who doesn't support Obama as 'racist', 'bigot', etc.; some of these groups, conveniently lumped as a demographic, may have had their reasons to support Clinton, or may have been simply trying to make up their mind about Obama. The great 'conversation about race' then turns into a particular demographic (coastal, nor'east or 'left coast', academically oriented, etc.) lecturing the rest of the country about all the social ills they should hang their heads over ... or at least, it can be spun that way by those who would benefit from the spin.

4. Getting someone like Parker, a so-called 'Southern writer', to pen an op-ed flattering the tiny margin of actual 'nativists' (a segment that's not anywhere near as big as the evangelicals who may or may not have 'swung the race' in 2004) in the Washington Post ... how many White Supremists, exactly, are avid readers of the WaPo Op-ed section? ... is an operation that advances this tactic. Look how it's worked even in this thread. She cites one idiot in West Virginia, and we dutifully attack our imaginary boogeyman with all the caricatures about Southerners, Southern white men and the well-worn tropes about their alleged disgusting characteristics.

The response becomes the actual ammunition; the original article, by someone who can also be spun as a 'Southern woman' who writes 'articles about domestic affairs, housekeeping and so on', and who was 'ganged up on just for quoting someone in West Virginia' (just for example), is lost in the shuffle.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat for those other troublesome groups: Veterans and their families, Latinos whose opinions on immigration are not homogenous, religious voters who aren't necessarily *politically* conservative, Democrats who disagree on traditional wedge issues like abortion, and pretty soon, even if these efforts are only marginally successful the Repugs have gotten the Dems to drive off enough margins for McCain to win.

Note that although this divisive strategy comes from the Republicans, it isn't their operatives carrying the water here, it is Democrats, 'liberals', outspoken members of our groups, predictably doing just what Rove and company want, causing the party to implode on demand. And allowing the Repugs to label the Dems as the 'divisive' party, just as they've been doing this entire legislative session.

6. Finally, consider this logistical point. They have a 50-state ground operation, intact since 2004 and complete with 72-hour, 36-hour, and 24-hour 'task forces', all armed with the ACLU's excellent playbook for such groups (and also their own standard dirty tricks squads).

These people have to have something to say that's effective, as well as mailing lists of people to say it to. Some of the messages are only good for a limited time, others have more legs (Willie Horton got air time, McCain's illegimate child in 2000 got a whispering campaign), all are targeted to the districts where they're meant to work to produce the necessary marginal gains. They've been experimenting with those messages for the better part of a year (especially with Obama, whose vulnerabilities were not as well known as Clinton's).

Can we all avoid falling into this trap? I'm very worried that we won't.

And, I just love how Southerners try to claim the mantle of being "real" patriots, considering their forebears' rebellion in the early 1860s. Well, to them, I say: go read www.fuckthesouth.com and then get over it -- you're gonna have Obama at "your" aptly named "White House."

This is just what I was talking about.

Some right-wing shill publishes a piece in WaPo and suddenly out comes all the foam-flecked invective and 'fuck the south'.

Who do you think this helps, exactly?

Divide and Conquer. They love it. As long as it isn't about the divide and conquer going on in Iraq.

More than love it, they count on it. Political market segmentation, with one segment handing the other to them with minimal investment.