Help wanted: Just send in the green

The Republican Party of Virginia owes me money and an apology because, like everyone these days, I'm outraged. Outraged! By everything!

Last week, the leader of the Grand Old Party implicated journalists in "shameful" and "vicious" attacks against his candidates. Ordinarily, it takes meeting me to reach that conclusion. He also called the media "elite," which sounds OK, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean it in a nice way.

Picking on Jeff Frederick, the 14-year-old head of the RPV, is - I know - poor form. But he started it.

The party's boy wonder, who also happens to be a state delegate (a fact that explains so much in Virginia), last week spammed the planet with an electronic fundraising missive pointing out that the liberal media are bent on destroying us all. And by "us all" he meant John McCain and Sarah Palin. And by "destroying" he meant "asking them questions."

Secret minions dropped Frederick's missive in my in-box, where it fell neatly next to the weekly update from the Trilateral Commission, the Flat Hat Society, DC Comics' Justice League and all the other groups engaged in my secret conspiracy to take over the world.

Frederick's letter begged his fellow Republicans to send "$25 or $250 or $2500" to Richmond. It included the usual barker patter about how the party's two candidates are The One, how important Virginia was going to be in November, and that for some inexplicable reason Democrats aren't surrendering in the face of the GOP's unbelievable might.

He also asked the state's upstanding, righteous and presumably law-abiding Republicans for help circumventing those pesky federal campaign laws - you know, the ones that limit McCain's finances: "However, federal law allows the Republican Party of Virginia to raise and spend funds to elect our ticket."

Ah, that difference isn't at all a technicality. So send your money today.

That brings me to the source of my fake umbrage:

"Please help us fight Obama and the liberal media elite so that we can ensure that Senator McCain and Governor Palin win Virginia this year. The Republican Party of Virginia is ready to keep Virginia red. Help us by making a generous donation now."

Get that? Keep Virginia red - even though I'm pretty sure my doctor has a good lotion for that - by sending some green.

For such a group of reform-minded maverick reformers who walk the walk and love italics and fresh new ideas about change and the status quo (I think that's all the buzzwords), the RPV has taken a pretty hoary approach to fundraising. Aggrieved politicians who need an enemy have been running against newspapers since they were printed on rocks. At least since the days of Ben Franklin.

Now, though, the preferred target is something called the "liberal media elite" - a phrase so commonly deployed that it demands to be decoded: "Liberal" means anyone other than Sean Hannity; "media" is a form of communication other than talk radio and FOX News; and "elite" includes anyone who disagrees with the listener.

So, as a bona fide member of the "liberal media elite" (I just used unnecessary Latin, for goodness sake), I'm now helping raise money for the Republican Party of Virginia even as I work as a secret ally of the Obama campaign. I think that makes me a double agent. At least.

I'll let you in on a secret. As much as they complain, both Republicans and Democrats have long used newspapers to carry their messages, to communicate with you.

I'll let you in on another secret. If he's like most politicians, Frederick doesn't really care whether an elite member of the liberal media (or a liberal member of the elite media) criticizes him, or the RPV, or the GOP's candidates for president, so long as the donations roll in.

In fact, one big-time local pol used to tell people that the more the editorial page criticized him, the more money he raised. That never stopped him from complaining about what we wrote, even as he counted the money.

So I promise, despite all preceding evidence to the contrary, not to take any of Frederick's criticism personally. It's just business.

Given that, I figure the least he can do now is pay me a commission.

Donald Luzzatto is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail him at donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.