When you can’t engage in a defense of your positions, try to divert people’s attentions away from your failings.

That’s what the Democrats have been doing for over a decade now. They create bogeymen as a symbol of hate, and direct all their troops in that direction, keeping their focus away from their lack of leadership or new ideas. In the Clinton era they used Ken Starr as their whipping post, then it was George W Bush, and now they’re focusing on Rush Limbaugh.

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

The first month of the Obama administration has sown us they are incapable of dealing with the problems facing the nation and the world. Their solution to the massive deficit is to triple it. Their solution to the credit crisis is to make America indebted for generations. And the help the economy? Pass cap and trade laws that will bankrupt energy companies and limit growth.

It’s like fighting fires with gasoline.

Their only answer to the anger they’re about to feel from the public is to divert their attention away on someone else. Since Bush is gone from office, they have to find someone to demonize, so they selected Limbaugh (after trashing Bobby Jindal the other day). The problem for Obama is Limbaugh can fight back. George W Bush chose to not defend himself that much, or even explain his positions that well. Limbaugh is a communications expert. And the Dems will only make him a bigger star if they engage him.

I don’t think they really understand what they’re getting themselves into.