The right wing is freaking out over the idea that Obama is spending $200 million a day on a trip to India and Asia. By the way, the war in Afghanistan? That costs about $190 million a day.

The problem? It’s a complete lie, yet another example of the right wing echo chamber. They don’t care about truth.

Fortunately, at least some members of the media are paying attention, and breaking it down. The White House won’t (and shouldn’t) disclose actual costs and security measures on the trips, but Anderson Cooper pulled up figures for Clinton’s trip to Africa several years ago. Adjusted for inflation, that longer trip to more countries (6 countries in 11 days vs. Obama’s 4 in 9) cost the taxpayers some $5.2 million a day.

But the damage is largely done, just as it has been done countless times before. Some right-winger fabricates some piece of bullshit — say, death panels, or go back further to the Swift Boat horseshit in 2004 — and gets it into the media conversation from pundits and hacks like Limbaugh and Savage and Beck, and then gets quoted by party hacks like Michelle Bachmann, and a good chunk of our halfwit nation buys it and never hears the truth.

That’s how the GOP plays. They do it over and over; they do it far too often to claim innocence here. They are the party of open mendacity. This is what it means to be Republican in 2010.