Playing the same old game

Today's column by Leonard Pitts is a must-read:

...there is little that is surprising about the Republican National Committee fundraising document recently reported by Politico, the one that offers strategies to get donors to part with their money. Donors can, it says, be persuaded to give by appealing to their egos, by offering them tchotchkes or by promising them access. And some, the small donors, the $5- and $10-Janes and Joes, can be persuaded if you play to their fears.

The sole surprise is that someone actually wrote it down as a PowerPoint presentation and was absent-minded enough to leave a hard copy in a hotel.

Here, then, is the smoking gun, concrete validation for those of us who contend that since Sept. 11, 2001, fear has been the GOP's leading export, that under the aegis of George W. Bush's political guru Karl Rove, the party's message boiled down to a single command: Be very afraid.