BARRY RUBIN: The Left’s Very Anti-PC Strategy: Hate, Fear, Stereotype, and Treat Diversity as Evil.

When one talks to supporters of President Barack Obama, one quickly learns that his actual policies and their relative success or failure are of no importance for many of them. Some have defected, many more are worried (even if they won’t admit it publicly) but might overcome their doubts and vote for him again.

The significant factor shaping their views is one of self-image. . . . To support Obama makes them smart, sophisticated, anti-racist, modern, members of an intellectual and social elite standing against the yahoos with the pitchforks out in the provinces. From the defenders of the downtrodden, the left has transformed itself into the well-financed aristocracy sneering at the peasantry.

That’s why the theme of portraying the opposition as greedy, rich, fat-cat, corporate chieftains and simultaneously hillbilly, gun-toting, religious fanatic racists who think Obama is a Muslim-born in Kenya and want to reinstitute slavery is so incredibly effective in shoring up its base of support.

Even the simplest points of fact — that the Tea Party is a group of people opposed to big government, high taxes, tight regulation, and large deficits — barely appear amidst the propaganda aimed at discrediting any opposition as illegitimate.

If you can persuade people that anyone is insane if they want to cut economically unproductive government spending and not raise taxes at a time of massive depression and growing deficits, then you have a pretty good propaganda machine.

I don’t think it will be good enough, this time.