Dana "Pig Missile" Perino attempts a baseball metaphor at Politico to describe Democratic and Republican positions on health care reform, explaining why Obama can’t score the winning run but the Republicans have a terrific team that can win this thing.

You really have to read this fantasy through to realize she’s on another planet. She actually believes the Republicans have great ideas that would score with the American people, if only they had a fair chance to present them and read the field correctly.

Poor piggy. She can’t even stick with her own metaphor. She correctly sees the Republicans in the far outfield; they’re not even pitching, let alone covering the infield/bases. Then she comments on how they can score runs by yelling "you lie" from the stands.

The Democrats can’t score, she says, because their polls are falling. They are, but their polls are close to the 40s, Obama’s hitting about .530 and the Republicans are hitting about .220, which means their lineup of puny ideas is the least likely to score in any league. Does she really believe "malpractice reform" can be their clean up hitter?

You’d never know that the Republican strategy for the last six months has been to invite thugs onto the field and instruct them to obstruct the base paths, to intimidate the umpires and assault the Dems every time they get on base. There are not four bases: there are 60, and if we get close, there are 80, because in the Republican version, your side only gets to score if you circle the bases holding hands with Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, the tv/radio announcers describe this as just the usual game. They pretend not to notice that the Republicans get to bean the Democrats, never hit a foul ball, never strike out no matter how wildly they swing, and are never thrown out of the game for conduct destructive of the game.

And the President keeps pretending the game has rules and everyone respects them.

When I was a kid, we played baseball most afternoons, and every Saturday in the summer, from early morning until dark, and I mean dark. Hour after hour. But the game always continued because we had rules, and everyone honored them without having umpires — you get this close call, we get the next one; cheaters don’t play, they’re banned — because everyone knew that if the rules weren’t honored, the game immediately collapsed. Too many people have forgotten why this matters, and piggy has no clue.