Earlier this week, right-learning journalists went rummaging through the old financial disclosure forms of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and discovered she was invested, to the tune of $1,001 to $15,000, in a 401(k) operated by a thoroughly ordinary money-management firm of California advisors called the Davis Financial Group. The “Davis Financial Fund” invests in many companies, among them Wells Fargo, American Express, the Bank of New York, global pharmaceuticals, and – and this is the important bit – international banks, including an august old Swiss bank called Julius Baer, Ltd.

Now: It so happens that Debbie Wasserman Schultz recently criticized quarter-billionaire Mitt Romney for keeping some number of his unaccounted millions in a Swiss bank account, safe from American taxation. Perhaps you see where this is going? From The Weekly Standard‘s David Halper:

To be clear, there is nothing in Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s disclosure forms to suggest that the DNC chair invested in anything illegal. But it is clear that some of her holdings had investments overseas, in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, the state bank of India, and many other overseas holdings. 

The hypocrisy, though, is clear: The Democrats, as well as President Obama, hope to paint Romney as an out of touch man for holding money in overseas bank accounts, when in reality their own chairman, Wasserman Schultz, had overseas investments. 

I hope Halper’s readers are aware that there is a difference between, on the one hand, having a 401(k) with a company that runs a fund that diversifies its portfolio by investing in, among other things, overseas banks; and on the other opening an account in one of those banks to avoid the United States’ (rather light) taxes on unearned income. Halper himself either hopes the opposite – that Republican hatred of Debbie Wasserman Schultz burns so fiercely that it will overheat his readers’ critical faculties – or else he is far stupider than his writing style suggests.

Because Halper, and those who’ve picked up his story, probably are not stupid, it may be worth wondering: What does it mean when a political party’s media apparatus has so little regard for the intellectual discernment of American citizens? And: Why would anyone vote for a political philosophy whose most committed propagandists treat the citizenry like children? And: Why are The Weekly Standard‘s readers willing to put up with such nonsense? And, finally: If The Weekly Standard‘s readers are willing to put up with such nonsense, might Americans really be as stupid as Republicans seem to think?

David Halper, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, hypocrisy, Mitt Romney, overseas banks, Swiss banking, The Weekly Standard, weekly standard