NEXT THEY'RE GOING TO DIG UP REAGAN AND MAKE HIS CORPSE DENOUNCE THE AD

Phony outrage as a way of stirring up the base (and presumably opening up their wallets for the '08 election cycle) -- why limit it to the president's surrogates?

Kate O'Beirne and I just got back from a meeting with the president in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a small group of conservative journalists.

...President Bush may have been most emphatic though when it came to the topic of "those left wing ads" attacking General Petraeus. The president brought the infamous New York Times MoveOn ad up without prompting, saying of his reaction to it: "I was incredulous at first and then became mad." ...

At this point, if I were the target of these Republican attacks, I'd proudly put a banner on my home page:

MoveOn: Now the Central Front in the War on Terror

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By the way, Ed Gillespie, as Republican National Committee chairman in 2004, attacked MoveOn because two entries in its "Bush in 30 Seconds" video contest mentioned Hitler. Shortly afterward, Gillespie also referred to an Al Gore address to MoveOn as "hate speech." And now the White House is attacking MoveOn at a time when Ed Gillespie is the White House counsel and has been given parts of Karl Rove's job. Coincidence?