Leaked documents reveal GOP plan to use scare tactics to raise money

"National GOP leaders are doing damage control today after a Politico scoop lifted the curtain on the party's plan to tap voters' "fear" in the coming campaign season. The PR problem started when an absent-minded attendee at the Republican National Committee (RNC) confab on February 18 in Boca Grande, Florida, left a 72-page document from its 2010 strategizing session in a hotel room. Today, Politico reporter Ben Smith's expose is making headlines.

The memo tracks the fundraising presentation that RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart delivered to the RNC's $2,500-a-head annual retreat. The best path to victory in 2010, the document advises, is for Republican candidates to depict themselves as the best hope for resisting the "trending toward socialism" taking shape in a Democrat-dominated Washington.

And the document doesn't shy from making its points graphically. MSNBC showed the images this morning on Morning Joe [See page image above]:

The presentation portrays the Obama administration as "The Evil Empire," includingthe now-infamous image of President Obama made over in the makeup Heath Ledger used in his performance as the Joker in the 2008 Batman movie "The Dark Knight." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears as Cruella De Vil from "101 Dalmatians," and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the witless cartoon dog Scooby-Doo. The memo candidly confirms that the aim of such caricature is to amp up "fear" among the GOP's conservative base. The memo also makes fun of major RNC donors, categorizing some as "ego-driven" and easily pacified with "tchochkes" (a Slavic word for toys).

The embrace of harsh rhetoric and the swipes at the large donor set seem to signal the GOP establishment's growing comfort with employing tactics associated with the activist Tea Party movement-and with plying Tea Party sympathizers for cash. Of course, it isn't unusual for parties out of power to court controversy and play with fire to rile up donors and grass-roots activists. The RNC has caught heat for fundraising tactics in the past, most recently when it was caught sending out fake census forms to raise money. And Democrats have shown a demagogic streak in the past, depicting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as Bond-like supervillains and playing up alleged GOP plans to kill Social Security to rally voters behind a popular entitlement program."

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