VIRGIL GOODE: HIS BOSSES DON'T THINK HE'S IN A HOLE AND HE'S GOING TO KEEP DIGGING

Both Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report and David Weigel at Hit & Run invoke the old saw about the futility of digging when you're in a hole in reaction to an editorial in this morning's USA Today, entitled "Save Judeo-Christian Values," by GOP House member Virgil Goode. In the op-ed, Goode defends the letter he wrote to constituents a couple of weeks ago linking the election to Congress of Keith Ellison, a Detroit-born Muslim, to illegal immigration.

The fact that Goode doesn't back down an inch, and -- especially -- the fact that the op-ed appears in the largest-circulation newspaper in America on January 2, not during the dead-zone week between Christmas and New Year's, tells me that the Republican Party doesn't see any reason whatsoever to pressure Goode to tone it down. I'll say again what I said before Christmas: The GOP doesn't mind a bit that Goode is rallying the haters in the party's base. It's the same old Republican strategy: paint Democrats as utterly beyond the pale, as a way to make sure that some voters, at least, never, ever consider voting Democratic. It may be the wrong strategy these days, but nobody in the party believes that yet -- or, at least, nobody in the party believes it enough to tell Goode he needs to shut the hell up.