Or why Barack Obama wants to double FOX News' ratings.

FOX News is all a flutter about the White House War on FOX News. Rupert Murdoch is calling it a ratings boon, and FOX News just can't seem to stop creating stories about how they're now on the Obama White House's "enemies list."

But I have to laugh at all the serious journalists who are wondering if it's "wise" for the White House to go after FOX this way. Of course it is.

This very coordinated attack on FOX News is nothing but an extension of the "Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican party" meme that the Obama White House pushed earlier in the year. And it has one purpose: to make moderates view the GOP as a party of extremists—a party not of Richard Lugars, but one of Glenn Becks.

Personally, I don't think the GOP needs any help in looking like a bunch of wackos and nut jobs. But to ensure that the fiscally conservative adults like John McCain can't get traction within the party any time soon, the Obama White House is intentionally giving strength and ammunition to the most extreme elements of the GOP.

Just as Nixon and Pat Buchanan altered politics for a generation by leveraging the fears and ingrained racism of the South into an electoral majority, Rahm Emanuel is leveraging those exact same fears and ingrained racism to slingshot public opinion of the GOP from the center to the extreme far right.

Look at the math. FOX News dominated cable TV ratings with an average 2.25 million prime time viewers during the third quarter of 2009.

Dominated? Really?

Barack Obama dominated John McCain with 69.5 million votes to McCain's 59.9 million. Obama's margin of victory was four times the average number of FOX News viewers.

And the voters that are up for grabs in every presidential election are not the extremists that watch FOX, MSNBC or write for JiveMofo. They are the moderates—the people who don't follow politics so closely. The people who might believe that Obama is not a citizen if it were to go unchallenged or that might believe that FOX News has a GOP bias because...well, because it's true.

So it really pays off for Obama/Emanuel to both attack and empower FOX News right now. If FOX News were to pick up a million more viewers in the fourth quarter, two things would be certain: 1) FOX News would produce a lot of stories about that fact, 2) those extra million people never did and never would vote for Obama.

Look for more attacks by the White House on FOX News and the right. But look for these attacks to always tie FOX News to some official position in the Republican party. First Rush Limbaugh was the leader of the GOP. Now FOX News is the research arm.

But understand that this White House is not attacking FOX—they're focusing the FOX searchlight squarely on the GOP.