In a smoke-filled back room in an elite, moneyed private club on the East Coast, the following scenario is being discussed between two of the power elite’s more powerful elites. Let’s call them Dick Toole and Harry Johnson.

As Dick and Harry see it:

The numbers have been crunched and the party’s McCain problem looks terminal. This presidential election, they conclude, can neither be won nor safely stolen.

They realize that they’ve lost the battle, but they’re entirely too smart to think they’ve lost the whole war. Remember, these people thing in the long term – the current GOP revolution began all the way back in the mid-1960s with some high-level theoretical work by a group of very wonkish academic types. So they’re less worried about who sits in the Oval Office for the next four years than they are about who controls economic and political policy making in 20 years.

If they must lose the White House until at least 2012, then it’s critical that they position themselves to undermine the Dems in every way possible during that period so that when they’re again able to seize control, they can do so with even greater power than before.

The GOP – as we’ve seen with the ACORN deception – seems to like the “Dem vote fraud” meme.

This misdirection notwithstanding, their ability to game an election is at least as strong as it has been in the past.

Dick says to Harry: “I have an idea.”

“Do you, now?”

“What if we get that cocksucker Diebold on the phone and see if his people can rig a few votes for us?”

“No point,” Harry says. “McCain is so goddamned far behind right now that there’s no way in hell to fix it. Not with people watching. Goddamned liberal blogger kids and their goddamned MyFace pages. Goddamnit.”

“Not what I’m getting at,” replies Dick. “Let’s have him flip a bunch of votes the other way – rig it so people voting for McCain have their votes switched to Obama.”

“You need to lay off the cheap stuff, Dickie boy.”

“Hear me out. Since we’ll know where the fraud is occurring, we can point the FEC right at it. Then we’ll have our folks in the “liberal media” turn it into the biggest story of the century.”

Harry nearly swallows his cigar at the “liberal media” crack. They laugh and enjoy the moment.

“So, anyway, it’s ‘Obama steals White House’ 24/7. People aren’t smart enough to know any better, right? We file a few law suits, get ’em in front of Tony and Alito and Roberts and Thomas, and hell, we may win this thing 5-4 again.”

“And even if we don’t,” says Harry, who’s finally catching on, “we’ve kneecapped Obama and the Dems to the point where they can’t govern. And in 2012…”

“WHAM! We’re back!”

“I like it, Dick. I like it.”

This short political thriller was presented by Just Smart Enough to be Paranoid Productions, which reminds you not to put that thing in your mouth – you don’t know where it’s been.