The newest attack ad by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS makes a mockery of fiscal conservatives and their place in the Republican Party.

For America's Maybach dealers, gourmet dog bakeries, and fancy French perfume shops, it is important that consumers keep spending on luxury items that they don't really need. It's the nature of the business. Those of us outside the 1 percent economy can nevertheless appreciate that blowing less dough on those sorts of goods is prudent in tough economic times for most people. Here in Orange County, California, I've observed numerous bankruptcies when folks enamored of status symbols failed to check their outlays as income dried up.

You'd think it would be uncontroversial to note that, for a lot of folks a bit farther down the income scale, certain moments in life aren't the best time to blow a lot of money on a Las Vegas binge. So when President Obama said in 2010, for example, "You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college," fair to say he's expressing a truism, rather than casting aspersions on wining, dining, gambling, Celine Deon, or performance artists covered in blue.

Enter Karl Rove's political ad factory, a shop of hackery so shameless it sees common sense and reacts with attacks like this:

One day, it would be interesting to tally up all the morally indefensible political attacks Rove has been party to in his life and to speculate about what circle of hell he and his hack Democratic analogs would occupy if Dante were writing today. These people are treated in television appearances as if they're upstanding community members, but it really is true that much of their professional lives have been spent deliberately manipulating people for financial gain*.