WE KNOW THIS DIDN'T WORK THE FIRST TEN THOUSAND TIMES WE TRIED IT, BUT THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT!

The Hill reports:

House GOP hopes 'Solyndra economy' becomes Obama's political epitaph

One year after it began, House Republicans are not letting up in their investigation of the $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar firm Solyndra.

Though the probe has not uncovered evidence of cronyism at the White House, the GOP sees an election-year advantage in pummeling President Obama on Solyndra, and hopes to turn it into a symbol of what they say is a failed administration.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans marked the Solyndra investigation's one-year anniversary on Friday with a new catch-phrase they hope will follow the president on the campaign trail: "the Solyndra economy." ...

For a year you've been trying this, Republicans? And you still haven't managed to hang it around the president's neck?

Can you take a hint?

Here's the problem: You've been trying to sell this as an example of slimy Chicago-style corruption -- but you've also been trying to sell it as naive patchouli hippie-ism. Those two archetypes are completely in conflict in any normal person's mind. You've got to pick one or the other.

I see that you've changed tack slightly:

[Republicans] argue that the Solyndra loan guarantee is emblematic of the president's heavy-handed approach to job creation. Republicans say they are the champions of the "Keystone economy," named for the Alberta-to-Texas oil pipeline that the GOP strongly supports.

"Solyndra and Keystone represent what’s at stake this November," Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.) said Friday during a press conference on Solyndra.

See, I think the president is somewhat vulnerable on Keystone, because rejecting an oil pipeline for environmental reasons plays into patchouli-Democrat stereotypes. But even people who are very pro-oil drilling regardless of the consequences aren't necessarily against green energy -- recall the New York Times article a couple of years ago about a nonprofit group in Kansas that was successfully selling notions of conservation and alternative energy even to climate-change skeptics. You tell heartlanders -- even right-wingers -- that green energy reduces imports from foreigners they don't like, and it becomes a fairly easy sell. Solar or geothermal as a home DIY project also pushes American self-sufficiency buttons.

So backing a solar company doesn't necessarily seem evil. And telling people "Obama did something that didn't work" actually contradicts how most people see the stimulus: namely, "What stimulus? I saw no evidence of it." In terms of public relations, too little of the stimulus was highly visible public-works projects; as a result, people think it was just a lot of money poured down a rathole. Now you tell the public, "Well, here's something Obama did" -- and it at least seems like an effort to do something (because the stereotype says that Democrats actually want solar energy to be used in America). The message is muddled. Give it up.