The strategy early on in the administration was to mock talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Remember the weeks of discussion over whether Limbaugh was the head of the GOP? That was back in the days when the White House was feeling invincible and thought it was a grand idea to make the idea of making Republicans affirm or reject every statement Limbaugh made in 15 hours of weekly pontification.

Conservative outlets were going to fight the president’s initiatives and their millions of listeners, viewers, and clickers were already predisposed to oppose government expansion. But what if elected Republicans could be forced to choose between the popular, young, history-making president and figures who fire up the Republican base but turn off the middle third of the electorate? By Axelrodian reckoning, this could simultaneously hurt the GOP with moderates and dispirit the Right.

Then came Guantanamo.

Dick Cheney didn’t seem to care whether Rush Limbaugh was the head of the party or if Colin Powell felt included. What he did care about was saying that bringing terrorists into the United States was a horrible idea.

Obama slapped back, but the Democratic Congress came down on Cheney’s side. Since then, the administration has been playing musical interrogation rooms.

That May showdown between the unpopular former vice president and the popular president was a watershed moment. That was when moderates began to lose confidence in the administration and the first cornerstone promise of the Obama campaign really crumbled.

Over the course of the summer, the administration’s actions continued to beg questions: The General Motors takeover. The brutal crackdown in Iran just after the president’s optimistic address to the Muslim world. The rising death toll in Afghanistan. The worsening post-stimulus unemployment and foreclosure rates.

In the midst of this maelstrom, the White House had to face the issue of health care.

Back in February when the president began his health initiative, he dismissed those who said he was trying to do too much. He did not foresee the predictable problems, like a crippling deficit, but failed to allow for the unexpected, like a gaffe about the arrest of the Henry Louis Gates.

By August, the idea of fighting with talk-radio hosts or even worrying about Republicans had become impractical. Despite his charming ways, the president had lost control of his party and the national narrative.

But the president failed to define the debate on health care, leaving the issue out there like a pinata for conservatives to batter. And Americans were already skeptical about a bankrupt federal government that was unable to administer a tax-rebate program for used cars. They said they’d rather not have a trillion-dollar, thousand-page plan just now.

The White House had to climb down from past positions and get liberals to accept much less than promised. So, the president and his team blamed talk radio, cable TV, and the Internet.

A group founded by Van Jones, a key organizer for the Obama campaign who subsequently joined the administration as the “green jobs czar,” took on Beck, the rising star on the Right. During the Skip Gates kerfufflle, Beck said he believed Obama was a racist who might have a “deep-seated hatred for white people or white culture.” Jones’ group, Color of Change, started a pressure campaign against advertisers.

The problem was that Jones is himself a racist who believed “white polluters” targeted minorities and who gave credence publicly to the theory that George W. Bush was a mass murderer complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Beck can be as far out as he wants as an info-tainer. But people expect that a senior White House official shouldn’t be a provacateur who dabbles in monstrous conspiracy theories. But the Left was immediately ready to go to war over Jones’ “takedown.”

Aside from Keith Olbermann’s hysterical pleas for relevancy, the community-organizing world will make stopping Beck and others a top priority. And if they believe conservative talk-show hosts are the reason for the death of a comprehensive health overhaul or the political demise of a hero like Jones, you can see why.

But as the fight goes to more boycotts and diversity harassment at the Federal Communications Commission, expect more losses for the Obama administration.

It is simply a distraction a president cannot afford.

Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected]