Charles P. Pierce is in rare form today, as he reacts to the rantings of a
Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum questioner at a recent "summit" in the Home of American Sedition, South
Cackalacky Carolina. The transcript is via
Nick Field at the PA Politics blog. First, here's the lady nutball's comment/ question:
Why is the Congress rolling over and letting this Communist dictator [Obama] destroy my country? Y'all know what he is and I know what he is. I want him out of the White House; he's not a citizen; he could have been removed a long time ago...Ted [Cruz?] told me I've got to wait for the next election. I don't think the country will be around for the next election. Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago! And the three admirals, and generals. He has totally destroyed our military. He's fired all the generals and all the admirals that said they wouldn't fire on the American people.
Hoo-boy. Needless to say, Santorum avoided telling the lady she needed professional help, instead saying essentially, "Don't blame me, I'm not in Washington any more." Now here's
Charles' response:
This is the party that modern conservatism has built, brick by brick, one indulged lunatic at a time, over the past 60 years. I leave the details to Rick Perlstein, but there is no question that this was a conscious choice made over time by one of the only two political parties that we have allowed ourselves. It began with the decision to side with the remnants of American apartheid. It continued with the decision to ally itself with the most virulently retrograde elements of American Protestantism. It was energized by the tragic historical truth that this stuff is an effective means of gaining political power. The thinking became more and more magical. The rhetoric became more and more unhinged. The willingness of the Republican party to tolerate an almost limitless amount of sheer public lunacy has led us to this moment, where the only answer Santorum dares give to a woman who believes the president intended to nuke an American city was to say that he wasn't in Washington at the time.
There is no Republican middle any more. Pundits go searching for it and never return. Their bleached bones are found two years later in a ditch surrounding an Iowa cornfield, or their entrails are discovered hanging from a pine tree in northern New Hampshire as a warning to anyone else who dares undertake the quest. Just over the past few days, we have seen two alleged Republican "moderates" take positions that, a decade ago, would have marked them as fringe nuisances.
Progressives have long noted, to little avail, what Charles is saying here: there's been no counterbalance to the mad rush the Republican Party has made to the ultra-right in recent decades. The Jacob Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Percy, Clifford Case, Ed Brooke brand of Republicanism has been dead and gone for two generations (thanks, St. Ronnie of Hollywood!). There's been a slow but steady migration out of the party by people who no longer want to be associated with the ever-stranger nuttery (as high-profile examples, Colin Powell, Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, James Jeffords). The void has been filled by generation after generation of "indulged lunatics" of the sort listed above, all the while
tolerated embraced by the Republican Party in its quest for political power, and by the spineless "mainstream media" in its quest to never question or offend the cherished hobgoblins of a subscriber or viewer. With
Citizens United opening the floodgates for right-wing plutocrat mega-bucks, we can be assured there will always be a party that's a haven for such "indulged lunatics" (thanks, "Justice" Kennedy!).
