I was thinking about using the hoary Lucy/Charlie Brown annual football farce as an analogy, but that one is a bit worn out, and it only gets at a part of what the GOP is doing to the American public.
A better analogy might be that verbal joust we all got into with the pesky guy or girl in kindergarten. My kindergarten nemesis was a girl named Marcia. Let's say I caught her doing something she shouldn't be. And she denies it. I call her a "liar", and she responds, "No I'm not; you are". Then I say, "No, you are." Then she'd say, "No, you are." And then I'd say . . . and on it goes, and whoever lasts the longest and gets the last word wins.
Or in some cases the teacher comes over, and from her point of view, it's a he-said, she said deal. Until one of Marcia's cronies comes over and accuses me of doing precisely the thing that you saw Marcia do, and a couple more of her friends come over and say the same thing, and the next thing you know, I'm sitting in the corner--the girls huddled in a pack behind me giggling. My dumb-ass friends, of course, haven't a clue what's going on. The GOP understands that winning depends on this kind of primitive battle of the wills and tribal allegiances, and truth and common sense and fair play and all those other good things we were taught in kindergarten are for suckers.
We could bring in Orwell here and the whole business of Big Lies, but that's pretty worn out, too. And we could bring in the seven-letter F-word, but that's off limits in polite company. Rewriting history and the psychology of collective denial is one of the things those Fs knew a thing or two about. They understand that truth is simply what the winner says it is. They know that the raw assertion of power will always defeat those who want to dialog and be reasonable. They understand how easy it is to distract and manipulate. And they understand how to use the virtues of democracy against itself--they have a right to prmote their lies in the market place of ideas, and if enough people vote for the lie, the lie rules.
But let's just keep it at this kindergarten level. Isn't it rather awe-inspiring, really, the brazeness of it, how the Republicans, Lucy-like, do this year after year, and everybody gets tired sooner or later of challenging them, and in the end they win? They understand that incessant repetition of falsehoods works, that browbeating the media works, and that they can create their own version of reality that has little to do with facts, which are slippery things that nobody can ever be completely sure about, anyway. Anybody who disagrees with their version must be a partisan Democrat. Some people live in the reality-based community, but most don't. We all learned that in 2004.
So here we go again with Palin and the stories about the bridge, the airplane, the cook, and so on. It's a kindergarten-level battle of the wills as to which version of reality will win--real reality or GOP reality. Are they going to win this round as well? Will the reality based community just eventually shrug its collective shoulders and say I've got better things to do than pursue this inane argument, or will they stop this thing in its tracks, early on, before it grabs hold?
Of course, the GOP wants the American public to think that real reality is just the Dems twisted version of it, and who's the media to question that? They have to stay even handed and all. Or is it really an emperor's new clothes situation in which the media fearful that the GOP will win this thing again better not burn any bridges. If they treat the Dems badly and Obama wins, they can make nice: "Bygones. But they know they're in for a world of hurt if McCain wins.