Tomasky gets at something here that I've been thinking about for a while: the Ayres stuff--and the pathological obsession with it on the right--is really not that effective with the public in general. It is effective with right-leaning pundits. Right-leaning pundits so see themselves as tribunes of the people that they just assume that they speak for the people. But, in actuality, they do not, and I think we're beginning to see the possibility of a new American consensus with the right on the outside looking in. I get the sense that they realize this, and that it's driving them crazy.
In any event, the fact that prominent members of the right seem to legitimately believe that Barack Obama is a communist shows you just how much that movement has descended into paranoid delusion.
