Follow Napoleon's Advice on the Chamber Pot 'Scandal'

“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.”

I’m actually pleased that Obama has gone after the Chamber of Commerce for allegedly funding Republican ads with foreign donations. Set aside that there’s no evidence whatever for it, as even the New York Times and CBS’s Bob Schieffer acknowledge. There’s much more potent ammunition here.

In the Chamber of Commerce, one couldn’t find a more homespun, middle-of-the-road group of Republicans to attack. Going after them shows just how desperate Obama and his henchmen have become in the face of worsening election prospects.

Trying to make Boehner the face of the enemy failed. The “Party of No” meme fell flat, as has every gambit intended to make Republicans look like the reason things are not getting better. Those efforts had to, given the GOP’s minority status (not to mention their leaders’ string-like spines). Republicans in Congress have clearly been able to block nothing the past 20 months.

So, being left with attacking private citizens — and not your typical “Wall Street fat cats” at that — amounts to digging that trench ever deeper. Not only will Obama not crawl out of it by November 2, it could keep him clambering for a foothold long afterward.

Better still, the harder he presses this the more he’ll alienate the middle. That’s a surefire losing tactic. There’s no better way to make the Republican majority even larger than it’s going to be than to press arbitrary charges against millions of small businessmen.

Going after the guy in top hat and tails from the Monopoly board with unfounded claims is one thing. It’s wrong, but it’s often effective. Painting the local Kiwanis Club member with a xenophobic brush is sure to backfire big time when it comes time to tally up votes.

Even better, someone might actually take Obama seriously. (Yes, I know that’s increasingly unlikely as each day passes, and not chiefly because of Chamber Pot.) If they do — “they” being, say, some ambitious young lawyer in the DoJ — they might just start looking into all his foreign campaign contributions collected illegally via credit card in mid-2008.

I admit this is outside my area of expertise, but that sounds like grounds for impeachment to my ears.

Jonah Goldberg scoffs at pundits like Jonathan Chait who invented the claim that the GOP would pursue impeachment if they took a majority in November, and rightly so. The odds of the GOP doing any such thing are depressingly remote, true. But at least CampaignGate would give them good grounds and it would make for great political theater. Whatever the legal technicalities, if nothing else, it would tie up Obama and his cronies for months or longer.

So, please Mr. Axelrod, unleash yet more Chihuahuas of war. Keep yapping up the wrong tree. Come January, you’ll find that winter has done to your artillery what Moscow’s did to that of Monsieur Bonaparte.