In a sign that the “Republican War on Women” meme is past its sell-by date, Democrats – i.e., the New York Times -- are now proposing that it was Republicans that came up with the catchphrase!

Democrats counter that Republicans use the phrase “Republicans’ war on women” more than Democrats to stoke a backlash among older and married women who reject partisan, feminist-sounding rhetoric and lean Republican. Ms. Greenberg said Republicans were “deliberately misconstruing” Democrats’ legitimate attacks.

I hope so. But are Republicans really that smart?

Let's suppose that the Democrats are coming to the end of the line on the “war on women” catchphrase. You can see why that might be so.

The essence of politics is simple: politics is division. The whole point of practical politics is to divide the electorate into two parts, with the greater part voting for you.

But this division business is not as easy as it looks. You can see the problem in the quote above. When you roundly accuse all Republicans of a war on women no doubt you will get the support of all young single women and all secularist educated women. But what “older and married women... who lean Republican”? What about all men except liberal betas? What about the white working class?

Thomas Frank's Whatever Happened to Kansas? illustrates the point. He argued that today's working-class voters voting for Republicans were yahoos and rubes. Didn't they understand that their economic interests, properly understood, lay with the Democrats?

That's the only thing that saves the human race. Your average ruling class is a lot stupider than its media operatives with bylines let on.

Hey liberals! Wanna know why the white working class is trending Republican? It's because they are the guys paying the price for your race and gender politics. It's not hard to figure out. Your average white working-class guy may not like bosses, corporations, and insurance companies, but he sure can't see much prospect of good jobs at good wages from the Obama crowd, not if women and blacks and Hispanics are first in line for the EMT and fire department jobs.

You can see that there also might be a problem with whipping black folks into a rage over Trayvon and Michael. Maybe it does help turnout in Democratic districts, but what about the much larger cohort of people that might think that race politics is so over now we've elected our First Black President?

We saw an example of the problem with race and gender politics last week with the cat-calling video. Its deadly serious SJW producers thought they were doing a gender thing. But then they got dumped on because their video didn't properly address race issues. There comes a point where even cultural Marxism starts eating its own. Or it starts counting social justice angels on a pinhead. Or both.

The problem with any brilliant political idea is that it may be too brilliant to be trusted to the ordinary political foot soldiers. Nobody should doubt the brilliance of the men that managed the campaign of Barack Obama, the David Axelrods, the Rahm Emanuels, the David Plouffes. But now Obama is in the hands of more modest talents, and it shows.

Nobody can deny the brilliance of the Frankfurt School chappies in converting the class-war politics of Marx into the race-and-gender-war politics of cultural Marxism. Even the execrable Herbert Marcuse had the brilliant idea that tolerance shouldn't apply to the bigots and class enemies of the right. But the smart guys are all dead. Now we have average bear identity studies majors mindlessly repeating the lessons they learned in the secular seminary. Earth to liberals: most of your rank-and-file hate police aren't all that bright; they are making enemies all over town, and they are teaching Americans that liberals are not noble champions of the oppressed but privileged bullies who would like nothing better than to get you fired for a careless tweet.

In 2014 Hope means getting past Obama. Change means trying something different than Obamacare, crony greenies, fights with Congress and Reid dysfunction in the U.S. Senate.

What I'd like to know is what cheap tactics the Democrats will next choose to divide America. Is the next big thing Sen. Warren's (D-MA) faux populism with new regulatory bureaucracies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Or her latest wheeze to increase Social Security benefits?

Maybe there's some new Neo-Frankfurt School out there with a new left-wing us-against-them politics. Maybe it's the Hardt-Negri “multitude” chaps that I wrote about three years ago.

I just have a feeling that the next Republican presidential candidate to catch fire will be the guy that can capture the lilberals' race-and-gender artillery and turn it back on the SJWs. Imagine what that would do to conservative morale.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.