Normally we don’t recycle the quote of the day for a new post but when the Speaker of the House starts babbling about Nazi symbolism, it merits extra attention. Riddle me this: Isn’t the point of astroturfing to create the perception that your viewpoint is more popular among the grassroots than it really is? It’s a tactic to boost your legitimacy, in other words: Good, hard-working Americans have seen the wisdom of your position and rallied passionately to your side. But if this is all a big ‘turf op orchestrated by the GOP, why on earth would Republicans be sending people out carrying signs with swastikas? There’s no faster way to delegitimize yourself as a crank, even if the swastika on the sign is meant as a derogatory symbol for the Democrats’ socialist aspirations. It’s Godwin’s law in action. Which means Pelosi’s theory is that the GOP has organized a massive covert PR campaign … aimed at discrediting itself? This is the steel-trap mind that’s helping to plan your medical coverage in the decades ahead.

Oh, another minor detail per Wizbang: Apparently there’s zero evidence of anyone actually carrying a swastika aside from a few testimonies in the comments at, um, Daily Kos. I have heard of one person carrying a sign with the SS symbol, in which one of the S’s reportedly stood for — you guessed it — socialism. Thankfully the left’s never done anything like that. Exit question via Andrew Breitbart: Why can’t the Democrats just pass what they want to pass with their supermajority and stop whining incessantly about Birthers and mobs or whatever? The answer, I think, is that the whole “mob” meme is effective only insofar as it creates the impression that the GOP is the stumbling block to ObamaCare, which of course is an outright lie. It’s the Blue Dogs who are holding things up for fear of a backlash in their purplish districts if they vote for socialized medicine. Which brings us back to the astroturf smear: If the left’s so sure this is all a psy op by Republicans and that Joe Public’s gung ho to run health care into a collectivist ditch, then the Blue Dogs should call the GOP’s bluff and pass whatever Obama wants. Then, when they’re all reelected next year, the great conservative fraud will be proved and The One will have a great victory, no? Put up or shut up, kids.

Update: Since the nutroots’ own fondness for astroturfing extends all the way to taking orders over the phone from Barack Obama, doesn’t it make more sense to think at least some of the cranks at these events are false-flag operations organized by the left? I have no evidence for my theory, but then, er, neither do they for theirs.