The bookish right-wing polemicists

SCANNING THE Sunday book sections, it soon became apparent to me that the Obama boo birds are on wing rather early his year. And considering that the president hasn' t been in charge for more than seven months, this jury of "authors" has spent less time on their convictions than if he had been charged with a library fine.

The latest eruption from the right-wing jeering section is Michele Malkin's tome, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheaters, Crooks and Cronies. Given the normal length of time to write and publish a book these days, it would be fair to suggest that our author, a right-wing polemicist, must have begun her outline for the Obama book when he was still at Harvard. But she's not alone. The ubiquitous Dick Morris, who has worked both sides of the aisle depending on the political climate of the moment, and his wife, Eileen McGann, are represented on the best-seller list by the apocalyptic work, Catastrophe, which the New York Times mini-captions as "stopping President Obama before he transforms America into a Socialist State".

There's also one by South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who's out with a remedial book, Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America's Slide into Socialism. And forever, there is always something from Bernard Goldberg, one called, A Slobbering Love Affair, the true (and pathetic) story of the torrid romance between Barack Obama and the mainstream media.

Really, Bernie. Slobbering? And considering how far downstream the mainstream media have drifted for several years, they are too far away from the action for mutual slobbering.

The Republican Four Horsemen

TIME FOR a new assessment of this week's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Award with some familiar names...

REP. MICHELLE BACHMANN. Minnesota Republican,  who suggested that swine flu epidemics only occur under Democratic presidents.  She later had to be reminded that the last one occurred under Gerald Ford, a Republican according to all of the papers at that time. 

        SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, of Kentucky, the U.S. Senate minority leader,  whose fatherly assessment of President Obama's first 100 days was long on criticism and short on praise, while closing with a Republican promise that it would continue the party's "principled support, principled opposition and pragmatic, creative solutions to meet the challenges of the day."   But he also warned that Arlen Specter's defection was a threat to the nation because it would give the Democrats too much power. ( Almost as much as the Republicans had during George Bush's first single-party six years, Mitch?)

       MICHELE MALKIN, simple-spoken columnist who spells her first named differently than does Bachmann,  who has traced swine flu to Obama's visit to Mexico and called the President a "frivolous man" who never goes anywhere without his teleprompter.    She heard about the swine flu source from Rush, who is believe to have heard it from the old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate. She was delighted that Specter bolted the party and advised him to not let the door hit him on the way out. He didn't.  

        MICHAEL STEELE, Republican national chairman who is always in the act, despite growing impatience within his party with his blundering comments about, well...everything.  There's an undertow of feeling that Steele must resign.  I hope they don't get ahead of the curve by the next trading deadline. .  The Democrats already have a chairman.

With enemies like these, Obama and his soaring popularity don't need more friends.  

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D Light is not a beer label.

AHEM.   THE ANGER on the daffy side of the Republican spectrum is leading me through a maze of newly-coined terms to refer to those Republicans deemed to be soft-headed about political moderation.  It wasn't that long ago that Michelle Malkin, an entry-level political theorist on the right, was hyperventilating with a special label for Republicans who might  agree with President Obama on such squishy matters about whether the earth orbits the sun, or whether a week was actually divided into seven days.  Ms. Malkin  referred to such impure conservatives as Bend Over Republicans.  One should not rush into the obvious  connotations.   

Now comes a fellow named George T. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush  - get used to it, folks, there's no end to the Bush family's domestic livestock  - who is threatening Florida's popular Republican  Gov. Charlie Crist for supporting Obama's stimulus package.   George T. hisses that Crist is D Light.   Although it hints at the code name for some  CIA operation, it means nothing more sinister than Democrat Light.  Such playful  trivia  might be useful for a contestant on Jeopardy,  but for a political faction still in the dark backwash of the November election it will have to be far more creative to salvage what little remains of their ideological boomerangs. 

There are an increasing number of apologies shaking out of the GOP's dirges these days.  Sen. Jim Bunning, of Kentucky, recanted his prediction that Justice Ruth Bader Ginzberg would be dead of pancreatic cancer in nine months.  How gross!   Earlier Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama joined the small chorus of Obama detractors by saying that Obama was an alien and serving illegally.     One of Shelby's aides later said, gosh, the senator was only jesting.  Right.  

Unfortunately, the loyal opposition, usually welcome in the two-party system, has troubled itself into a silly cadre of playground bullies with little to show for their huffs and puffs.  They have become more tiresome than terrifying.