Tea Party Thugs

Calling these guys “thugs” is actually a compliment. They’d have to climb about three stories to get to the ethical level of a thug. I’m talking about the bozos that have threatened Amy Myers, the 16 year old that challenged Michelle Bachmann to a debate on the Constitution and American History, with physical harm and even rape on Tea Party web sites and blogs.

Her father is, understandably, in a bit of a panic. But I agree with the Cherry Hill Police Chief that internet threats of this type are invariable hollow because the people that make them aren’t thugs as much as cowards.

This is just another example of how the Right Wing has taken political discourse out of the intellectual arena and into something that resembles the conversation at a make shift trailer park bar.

They focus on personalities rather than policies because, invariably, the evidence is against them in every case. All they can do is appeal to the baser instincts of their under 80 IQ base in order to keep them in line.

As a result you get people like the two wacko callers into Bryan Fischer’s show the other day reported by Right Wing Watch. The first railed against the "Benedict Arnolds" who are preventing the majestic eagle that is America from flying because "communistic cancers" like the NAACP and ACLU are undermining it at every turn.

The second was terrified that Muslims were going to be exempt from the health care reform legislation but allowed to serve on the "death panels" that would determine what care Christians would receive.

Thank you Sarah Palin for bringing the moronic term “death panels” into American vocabulary.

People like this are scary but, given the range of human intellect and emotional stability, it’s not terribly surprising that they exist and we learn to live with it.

But, when the Republican Party, one of two major political parties, begins to exhibit the same sort of irrationality, not simply because they’re pandering to the lunatic fringe which would be bad enough, but because lunatics are actually beginning to obtain positions of influence within the party, it’s time to really get concerned.

I worry that the corporate fat cats that have always controlled the Republican Party are beginning to lose their grip to the wing nuts.