C’mon Tim, say something stupid.

One crucial point is this. Conservatives don't think less of Rove or Rush or any of their other generals for perpetuating these lies. Among conservatives there is an understanding that Rush doesn't actually believe Gore claimed to have invent the internet. Rush knows exactly what Gore said. Rush's public stance is that of a knowing liar to those who know better. He's not stupid and he's not to be criticized for pretending to buy into the lie. He's selling it. He's selling it to the simpleminded and listless. And it's this understanding, this unwritten agreement that we, liberals and progressives, lack. *

Here is the thing. We liberals have supposedly figured it out. These tactics are “classic” and apparently “right out of the right-wing playbook”. But the truth is liberals won’t have truly figured it out until a liberal opinion maker realizes that the proper response to a Machiavellian maneuver isn’t a dissertation reverse engineering it, but a Machiavellian maneuver of their own. C’mon Tim, if Rush can do Machiavelli, certainly you can. Or is it harder than it looks?