Obama as the Joker, Nancy Pelosi as Cruella DeVille, and Harry Reid as Scooby Doo are just a few of the fun features of a leaked RNC fund-raising PowerPoint. Politico's Ben Smith broke the story, reporting that the presentation begins thus:

"What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate...?" it asks.

The answer: "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!"

Even Smith remarks on the presentation's extraordinarily "cartoonish terms," while admitting these sorts of tactics are pretty common in politics. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee, contacted for comment before the story ran, "reacted with alarm," he reports, "emailing major donors to warn them of a reporter's question, and distancing Steele from its contents."

• 'Good. Grief.' writes blogger Charles Johnson at True/Slant. "Look at this new insane presentation thing from the Republican National Committee and its number one meme-savant Michael Steele," snickers Juli Weiner at Vanity Fair.

• Doesn't Even Make Sense The Jake Tapper blog at ABC tries for dry, neutral coverage of the story, but falters at the Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo analogies. The term Tapper settles on: "incongruent canine comparisons."

• 'Either Paranoia or Stupidity Plain and Simple,' decides the Guardian's Michael Tomasky. This sort of thing may be common, but "honestly," he says, "why are these people taken seriously?" He tries a thought experiment:
  

Imagine if a DNC meeting -- not some bloggers and commentators like Naomi Wolfe, but the finance director of the DNC -- had delivered a presentation telling DNC members that the party's job was to stop the lurch toward fascism.

He would have been fired that same day, and then his name would have become a verb or a noun, standing for the Democrats; "relentless and strident efforts" to tear down George Bush personally.

• 'Don't Let Scooby Doo Take Away our Freedoms!!!' Jonathan Chait picks this as "Comment of the Day" on The New Republic's site.
  

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Heather Horn