Confederacy of Dunces

First, the Tennessee GOP tried to smear Barack Obama as an Israel-hating Muslim in a news release that drew rebuke from John McCain, Lamar Alexander and other party leaders. Now, the state party is back in the national spotlight for producing a YouTube video that attacks Michelle Obama as unpatriotic.

Obama, dutifully playing the role of the offended husband, personally responded this week during an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, telling the Republicans to “lay off my wife.”

“Whoever is in charge of the Tennessee Republican Party needs to think long and hard about the campaign they want to run,” Obama added.

Obama may not know that it’s pointless to ask “whoever is in charge of the Tennessee Republican Party” to think “long and hard” about much of anything. The headquarters, led by chair Robin Smith, is filled with foaming-at-the-mouth extremists who think, for instance, that America is fighting a holy war against Muslims. (Smith: “This is a war that puts the Christian faith in direct opposition to the Muslim faith.”)

Nationally, GOP leaders are urging state parties to tone down the usual Republican rhetoric after losing special congressional elections that featured these anti-Obama tactics in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi. Even Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker was quoted last week in The New Republic as saying that Republicans should talk about issues and reject “the same old stuff” in campaigning, meaning scurrilous smears of their opponents.

The renegade Republicans running the state party headquarters may goose their own fund raising with red-meat attacks against Obama’s wife. But what worries Corker is that they will hurt the party’s attempts to attract the independent voters who decide elections.