Comparisons of how the Bush Administration is the the worst part of Nixon’s Watergate are like a bad hooker—cheap and easy.

The “paper of record” has an interesting article about the RNC front-organization, Progress for America. Basically, this group is heavily funded to rubber stamp anything that comes out of the White House—promoting John Robert’s nomination within 7 minutes, Harriet Meiers within 11 minutes, and having Sam Alito’s promotion ready before it was even announced. It’s very easy when half of your “grass roots” funds come from the same top 15 multimillion dollar donors as the President, your board consists of former Bush campaign aides, and your employees are part of the revolving door of Republican lobbyists. They have a term for that stuff in the tech world.

It’s called Astroturfing (as in “fake grassroots”).

The first time I heard this term was in relation to the second Microsoft anti-trust case. When they lost, Hundreds of letters from readers appeared newspapers complaining about that it was being unfairly targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice. These readers turned out to be dead or fictitious.

It was because of this, I had always assumed it was a term from the tech world. Wikipedia correctly attributes this term to famed Texas Democrat Lloyd Bentson.

But more about Progress for America which recalls Nixon’s CREEP. It is amazing how such an offensive concept that is synonymous with Watergate, is not only alive and well today, but rationalized and spun.

Well those fifteen donors better watch out. The American people are slowly finding the spin is growing tiresome and astroturfing is no longer becoming a good investment strategy.