The Existential Martin Eisenstadt

Martin Eisenstadt has an image problem. Despite his high-profile involvement in the last presidential election as a Republican pundit and spokesman, some on the Left claim that Eisenstadt, who is chair of the Eisenstadt Group and a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy, is overstating his influence. Indeed, a few have even cast aspersions that he exists at all, claiming that his outsized persona is the creation of two obscure filmmakers.

As it turns out, though, Eisenstadt is the first victim of a truly modern smear campaign. Lefties who didn’t like what he had to say on the campaign trail—including, most notably, William K. Wolfrum—didn’t just go online to call him a dirtbag, they also claimed that he was a hoax. The joke went viral; it’s now almost impossible to find a mention of Eisenstadt online without the word “hoax” nearby. (Inadvertently, Gelf has been also complicit in this slander. Last year, we, too, ran a piece questioning Eisenstadt’s bona fides after he claimed to be the source of the leak about Sarah Palin’s poor African geography skills.)