y silly? Yes. But, also brilliantly simple.

Conservatives speak in bumper stickers. Obama speaks in thesis statements. In fact, he sometimes seems constitutionally incapable of concision.

He also seems to display a disdain for irrational excitability and confronts it with either princely dispassion, mocking disbelief or stirring oratory that speaks more to posterity than to the people in front of him.

So, with little coherent opposition, conservatives have feted the public with a campaign of confusion and fear composed of simple sound bites. And, it has worked.