Separated at birth?




Yeah, I know -- it's just too easy to compare Saddam-era visual propaganda with the Republican National Committee's official 2007 calendar. So, what the hell, I'll do it again:




Hey, I'm having fun. No Saddam this time -- let's shoot the works:




S.Z. at World-O-Crap brought the calendar to our attention and is running a caption contest for the March photo of Bush. Most entries are in the Bush-as-idiot mode. Understandable -- but I have to tell you, as a Free Republic/Lucianne lurker of long standing, I think these kitsch images still pack a wallop on the right. I have no doubt that right-wingers look at March and still see Manly Bush standing up to the forces who would drag him and thus America down. And August, as S.Z. notes, shows us Manly Rancher Cheney.

As a member of the party of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, I suppose I should be careful about criticizing the other side for having a personality cult. But I can't find any evidence that the Democratic Party itself, in the case of either Clinton or Obama, has fanned the flames of a personality cult in quite this way. I can't find any item made or sold by the party that allows one to moon dreamily over images of its leaders as sexy and/or steadfast; as far as I can tell, you can't even buy a calendar of any kind from the Democrats.

But that's the GOP -- it's the Party of Ideas, prominent among them the idea that "oooooh, W is so dreamy!"