If I was a high profile person put on a list with my photo next to a known terrorist, wouldn't I have grounds for a serious lawsuit? Slander is not protected free speech.
Obviously, an elected official may want to stay away from the libel option, but businessmen, celebrities, etc. shouldn't stand for this bullshit. If they are allowed to get away with this, don't think they'll be satisfied. Attacking and demonizing the left is an addictive thrill to these people, and until they pay for it, they will keep doing it.

Great, thought provoking post. The idea that society is organized differently now occured to me during the campaign. Aside from the new strategies mentioned above, even traditional organizing and advertizing, which will probably not be completely abandoned any time soon, can benefit from strategic adjustments.
  We were discussing the fact that we, in a fairly solid blue state, weren't seeing many Kerry ads.
"O.K., I guess they know what they are doing, they have to target ad buys in swing states", we concluded.
Then I started thinking about it some more. Who's to say that an ad buy in a non-swing state can't have a ripple effect across the country? Why shouldn't our party also run ads in the reddest of states, so that people know that we exist, that we don't have horns and a tail? If people are connecting to each other in different ways, non-local networks in cyberspace, etc., it seems that saturating one market at a time is short-term and short-sighted.
Building the brand over the long haul means spreading the message where it may not help you this election cycle. I'm not a pollster, statistician, chaos theorist, or market researcher, and I'm sure these ideas have already been explored, but thanks for letting me spout.