TOMORROW'S RIGHT-WING PARANOIA TODAY!

Want to amaze your friends by predicting a mass wingnut hissyfit before it happens?

Well, here's one you can say you saw coming a mile away: it's the forthcoming agitation regarding the 2010 census. The American Thinker offers a preview of the (for want of a better word) arguments:

... Those who want clean elections already are very concerned about the widespread vote fraud planned and perpetrated by Obama's friends in the ACORN organization. However, now that the recent election is over, we may let the subject fade from mind.

This would be very unwise. We have a census coming up in 2010, and with every recent census there has been a dispute with liberals who claim that inner-city residents are being under-counted....

If it appears that the number of registered voters is relatively high compared to the actual number of residents that are counted in a census tract, the activists are likely to say: "That proves we are undercounting minorities. We have analyzed the voter registration lists, and you're not finding all of these people."

Given that the Obama Administration will be in power 2010, how likely is it that they will resist these calls for extrapolating from voter records to count people that don't exist? If the voter rolls were accurate and did not include dead people, those registered in multiple states, or those registered under multiple identities and completely made-up names, all of which ACORN has specialized in, it would not be a problem. However, if ACORN pushes for an extrapolation from the voter registration lists, we could see potential losses of congressmen and legislators from more conservative areas to big cities....

The wingnut blog known as the Patriot Room follows up:

...we're not going to waste time on ACORN. The fit into the 2010 Census is obvious.

... here is the Census Bureau's page for getting a job: "The pay is good, the hours are flexible, and the work is close to home." "Thousands" are needed. (Seems a perfect fit for ACORN and its malignant horde, eh?) ...

The key here is the recurring motif. Fraud is everywhere, the wingers say -- and it's all the fault of one all-powerful, hydra-headed monster: ACORN. The wingnuts shriek "ACORN" the way half-mad street-corner radicals used to rail against "Rockefeller," or the way anti-Semites invoke "Goldberg" or "Hymie" -- but that's understandable, because it keeps the subject simple and the Antichrist obvious, which is the way angry right-wingers like their politics.

It's possible that this will stay at the Web/talk radio level, like Obama birth-certificate craziness. On the other hand, the GOP could decide to go mainstream with some form of census paranoia; recall the long campaign in the Clinton years to prevent the evil Democrats from using statistical sampling in the 2000 census (ultimately, the Republicans won that battle). Whatever happens, you will hear "census" and "ACORN" mentioned in the same breath at some point in the future. Remember, you heard it here first.