JUST LIKE BILL CLINTON AND HAROLD FORD, EXCEPT FOR THE BEING-IN-THE-SAME-ROOM-WITH-THE-WOMAN PART

Wow, right-wingers really are desperate. Barack Obama is surging and they really, really want to follow time-tested character-assassination scripts in dealing with him, but they're having trouble making the scripts work in his case.

But that doesn't mean they're not going to try. Today, via Memeorandum, I see that a righty blog from Wisconsin has posted a big hubba-hubba picture of former Star Trek: Voyager star Jeri Ryan, all curves and blond tresses, accompanying the following:

The Woman Who Changed the World

...After unsuccessfully challenging strong Democratic incumbent Bobby Rush in a Congressional primary in 2000, Obama returned in 2004 to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald.

... Obama ... had a formidable challenge in Republican Jack Ryan. Ryan was an impressive candidate....

Yet Ryan had a problem -- during the campaign, he was going through a messy divorce from actress Jeri Ryan, of "Star Trek: Voyager" fame. Details of Jeri Ryan's testimony contained lurid details about Ryan forcing his wife to go to sex clubs in Paris. These details were toxic to Jack Ryan's campaign, and he saw his poll numbers plummet -- eventually, Republican leaders pressed Ryan to quit the race, fearing he was toxic to the statewide ticket.

Eventually, Ryan bowed out, leaving the Illinois Republican Party to find a candidate to run against Obama. This led to the national embarrassment of Alan Keyes moving to Illinois to run.

...The rest is history.... it's fascinating to think that the salacious testimony of a woman scorned could one day fundamentally alter the path of the world in which we live. Without it, Barack Obama could still be sitting in the Illinois statehouse, planning his next political move.

Oh, that's genius: The text says the black guy didn't deserve to get where he is on his own merits, while the picture links the black guy, in your mind, with a hot blond chick. It's a racist two-fer -- and the sex part doesn't even require any actual sex, or even that the black guy and the hot blond chick have even met. We've gone from Clinton actually having sex with Monica Lewinsky to Harold Ford just attending a Playboy-sponsored party to Obama being linked in your mind with a blonde who was married to his opponent.

This got picked up first by a righty radio host from Wisconsin, Charlie Sykes (he didn't even post the text, just a link and the picture), by the midlist righty blog Uncorrelated (two pictures, the one that's in the original post and a huge shot of Ryan in skintight Borg wear from the TV show) ... and, now, by Michelle Malkin (no picture at the post, but the sidebar at her main page does tease with side-by-side photos of Obama and Ms. Ryan).

The good news is that they're really struggling to find ways to smear Obama. The bad news is that they'll never stop trying.