It’s the Carville, stupid

It turns out my little Christmas fantasy was right on target after all. See: Timothy P. Carney & Trent Lott & the Courts on National Review Online

The Lott turmoil was entirely manufactured by Democratic operatives — namely by unrepentant Clintonite James Carville, who first made an issue of the remarks the same night on Crossfire — and then pushed the story behind the scenes wherever they could, explaining to pundits and politicians how this could be used to sock it to the GOP.

If Carville wins — if the bar for branding someone a racist is lowered to a single careless comment, an unreflective childhood in the south, and a belief in states’ rights — that puts every Republican politician or nominee in a little more danger. It expands the media’s definition of “extremism.” Anyone whose voting record or ideology resembles that of “disgraced former Majority Leader Trent Lott” will be suspect — and vulnerable.

This means any judge who ever used the concept of federalism in his decisions will be attacked for “using the racist codeword of ‘states rights’.”

It’s a lose-lose situation — and a checkmate for the attack dogs of personal destruction.

So here’s the chain: Carville talks it up on CNN, and then gets ABC to cover it in The Note, where Atrios sees it. Then Sidney Blumenthal (or Carville again) gets Josh Marshall to blog it. Glenn Reynolds first saw it on Marshall’s blog, and we know the rest.