The National Republican Congressional Committee is not deranged. The National Republican Congressional Committee is not deranged. The National Republican Congressional Committee is not deranged.

I really don’t think it’s deranged (and I said it isn’t), but I think the stress of defending a certain unnamed occupant of the White House is taking its toll, if not on the NRCC’s sanity, then on its credibility. And yesterday it invested its credibility in calling 29 House Democrats “deranged.”

I’ve been building a file of NRCC press releases over the last month or two. Of course we don’t look for political neutrality — nor much respect for factuality or fairness — in press releases from such a partisan political body. (The NRCC is chaired, by the way, by Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer).

NRCC uses the word “socialist” in pretty much every press release to describe the particular Dem under attack and generally assigns an unflattering nickname to every Democratic House member or candidate, as the guy in the White House does. Sometimes it throws the S-word even at moderate liberals like Minnesota’s freshman Rep. Dean Phillips. Its latest attack on him said: “In the latest example of his socialist extremism, Dean Phillips just voted to jeopardize the safety of our troops both at home and abroad.”

But in the case of Minnesota’s Collin Peterson, they just went for alliteration and nicknamed him “Cranky Collin.”

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It’s juvenile. Or should one say despicable? Well, it’s at least a parody of an organization that attaches no meaningful meaning to the word “socialism” nor to the concept of credibility or civility in political rhetoric. It’s just sad. Pitiful. Execrable. Its staff can’t be as stupid as they come across, but it’s hard not to assume that they believe they are writing for an audience of idiots.

In stockpiling some of their press releases, I’ve been planning to summarize their approach at some future point, but yesterday they went really quite berserk, or else someone just fell asleep with a finger on the “copy,” “paste” and “send” buttons, attached to a weird program that kept inserting the name of different Democrats into the same press release over and over so it could call them all “deranged “socialists.

Seriously. This really happened. In my own little email inbox.

At 5:13 yesterday, I received a press release from RNCC flack Camille Gallot headlined: “McBath is deranged.” McBath turns out to be U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Georgia. Naturally, the NRCC folks are not fans. It’s their job to help their party defeat every House Democrat.

The argument that McBath is deranged was that she had voted nay on a Republican motion. The motion proposed that the House condemn Speaker Nancy Pelosi for calling Donald Trump a “racist” after his recent, highly mature, rational and defensible remarks that four young Democratic congresswomen who don’t like Trump should go back to the countries from which they came. (Three of the four were U.S.-born, but let’s not let that get in the way.)

But, since the four soon-to-be-emigrants (if they follow Trump’s advice) were all in the black- or brown-skinned categories, Pelosi called Trump a racist, which led to the Republican motion to condemn her for unacceptable name-calling. Seriously. 190 Republican House members voted “aye,” and 231 Democrats, plus one independent, voted “nay.” So the motion failed, but at least the votes were counted and democracy prevailed — but before news of the vote outcome had even reached my inbox, the email calling McBath “deranged” arrived, based entirely on her vote, along with 230 other Democrats, against Pelosi for calling Trump a racist. Which would raise the question: Why single out McBath?

Answer: Because they didn’t.

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One minute later came an email from a different NRCC flack named Torunn Sinclair headlined “O’Halleran is deranged.” Word for word identical, but this one targeted Democrat Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Arizona, who (guess what) had also voted aye.

I could see where they were going but was concerned that Sinclair might get in trouble for plagiarizing, word for word, the earlier, very well-written press release.

But before I could worry about the ethical implications of that, at 5:20, ding, Michael McAdams, another NRCC flack, sent one headlined “Pappas is deranged.” Chris Pappas, D-New Hampshire. Word for word, except for the name.

That same minute, I got another one from flack Carly Atchison repeating word for word the “deranged” attack, this time filling in the name of Rep. Cherie Bustos, D-Illinois, who, unsurprisingly, also voted not to condemn Pelosi for calling Trump a racist.

OK, I won’t keep going. By 6 p.m., the blizzard subsided. The condemnation resolution had failed. I received 29 mails over 30 minutes, identical except for the name of the Democrat whose sanity was called into question, “authored” by four allegedly different flacks — all speaking for what used to known as the Party of Lincoln.

Maybe I didn’t receive them all, but if I did, my question would be why the other 202 Democrats who declined to denounce Pelosi for her cruel, false allegation against the POTUS were underanged.