michael tomasky takes apart the latest smear of one of obama's judicial nominees. it's pretty interesting how blatant the lie is and how easy it would be to refute, if they just took a few minutes to look into it. and yet in right blogistan the lie is repeated endlessly as fact.
this is what i predict: i expect few, if any, of those bloggers will ever retract what they say. certainly newt gingrich won't. to them, judge hamilton will always be the judge that favored allah over jesus. inside their own bubble the lie becomes an unquestioned fact, a premise for their next howl. "judge hamilton" will become a shorthand for their own paranoid belief that islam is favored over christianity in this country--something that seems laughably false to people outside their bubble. and even though most people probably won't know who "judge hamiliton" is, the right will evoke his name in speeches. it's a good way to throw red meat to their supporters, but it's a horrible way to ever win over anyone who isn't already on your side.
that's basically the dilemma of the modern right. they're building their own alternate reality that they really believe to be true. and they believe that repeating these "facts" is the best roat out of the political wilderness. except that to everyone else, the repetition of stuff like this look like rants. it isn't very convincing (especially, to anyone who bother's to fact-check them) and instead makes them look crazy.
