GOLDBERG REVEALS OBAMA'S PLOT TO EMBARRASS CONSERVATIVES WITH THEMSELVES. With, as is traditional, one foot in a bucket and his fly open, Jonah Goldberg takes on Obama's Don't Ask Don't Tell play:

It's not aimed at voters, but at conservative talk radio and similar sectors of the Right. Obama wants to win back independents. And while I doubt that independents care very much — at least right now — about the issue, they also don't like big fights over gays.

Goldberg trying to do nuance is like a drunken bear trying to do origami, but I think he means that while independents don't care about gay people's civil rights, they do have a guilty conscience about it.

Stirring-up social conservatives and eliciting the inevitable harsh soundbites from, say, Pat Robertson would provide the White House with an opportunity to reprise the anti-talk-radio storylines of early last year (remember the whole White House v. Limbaugh fuss?). Whatever the merits of the issues, and fair or not, independents tend to blame conservatives for those sorts of debates.

That damned Obama! He'll hypnotize fag-bashers into bashing fags -- and do it in such a way that people will blame the fag bashers! Is there no end to his perfidy?

So, as a matter of strategy, why have that debate if Obama and Pelosi aren't actually going to do anything about Don't Ask, Don't Tell for the foreseeable future.

Looks like the independents aren't the only ones who are embarrassed. I wonder how many rightwing brayers will lash themselves to the mast at Jonah's command.

I haven't looked for any polling to back that up, it's just my hunch.

I realize this is a sign of narcissism, but sometimes I think Goldberg says stuff like that just to confirm my prejudices about him.