A CHILDLIKE FAITH. Apparently orders for new, improved Obama insults have gone out to the talkshops of the right. In the blog mills, where they churn out the rough stuff, they call the President insane. In the journalism plants, where they water the stuff down a bit for mass consumption, they promote softer-sounding diagnoses of Obama's alleged dysfunction, such as Dinesh D'Souza's and Newt Gingrich's contention that Obama is playing out the anti-colonialism of the father he barely knew, Dorothy Rabinowitz's that Obama is an "alien," etc.

In the fudge factory known as National Review, Kathryn J. Lopez churns out the pablum version. It begins with the sort of belly-flop that first made her NR bosses say, "Make her an editor if it'll just keep her from writing":

If Carly Simon were a conservative, she might be writing “You’re so vain, you probably think this White House is beneath you,” to accompany the next big tea-party rally.

Thereafter she tells us that everything Obama has done has been a failure and all the Democrats hate him for it. Example:

He made a lot of Democrats fall on their swords for a health-care plan that could conceivably be dismantled before it’s even remotely fully implemented.

Similarly, he keeps showing up at work and signing bills even though God could strike him dead at any moment.

Stop there, K-Lo, someone should have told her -- it's not too late to be merely rather than spectacularly incoherent. But no, she had to come up with philosophi-mological explanations like the former Speaker and all the other cool kids did. Here's her first:

Some of what Barack Obama does can be attributed to a fondness for socialism.

Well, here at least she's using understatement, because all conservatives know Obama isn't just fond of socialism, he likes to kiss and hug it. Maybe Jonah Goldberg saw this over her shoulder and laughed, thus fatally encouraging her, and after she brushed the Cheeto crumbs from her jacket K-Lo wrote this:

The answer for all the analysts may be just a bad old-fashioned vainglory, one that the man just can’t keep in check. Thus the snippy Slurpee comments, about Republicans standing on the sidelines (drinking them). Besides the issues of truth — House GOP leader John Boehner has been making concrete bipartisan proposals, so he can’t legitimately be attacked for standing on the sidelines — more Americans today could probably relate to 7-Eleven than to Martha’s Vineyard.

Obama's snotty comments (making them) about Slurpees (disdaining them) shows reg'lar Americans he'd rather be in Foofytown drinking fancy drinks (umbrellas in them) than chowing down on an Arby's Chicken Cordon Bleu Sandwich by a dirty overpass and telling Mooslims to go to hell.

In addition to his godless attacks on sugared slush, Obama proves his hubris by acting as if his Presidential victory means something -- "It’s as if he won American Idol fair and square and he’s going to do with the win what he will, make of his title what he will." Whereas K-Lo knows he only won it because he's pretty and has a nice voice, not like George W. Bush, who earned his victory on Jeopardy! after long nights of hard study.

In short, Lopez' entry is less like the baroque conspiracy theories now fashionable, and more like the first injured wingnut peeps heard after it sunk in that the hated blackamoor had won: That he's snobby and he isn't all that. It's a time trip back to when they were all snarling about "The One" and the Obama Dear Leader Song, and dreaming about how he'll get his comeuppance after the Prom.

Well, I'll say this for it -- it has the advantage of simplicity. If I am sometimes moved to pity for K-Lo because even he own colleagues look down on her, I can also see a benefit to being so incurious and Jesus-addled -- she doesn't need fancy theology to know that her redeemer (John Boehner) liveth.