Congressional Flames

I mentioned back HERE in April my incredulity that it wasn't just Glenn Beck egging tea partiers on, it was actual members of Congress. AND I had a pretty good Throw Mama from the Train zinger at the very end. And today Andrew Sullivan wrote about yesterday's Bachmann "rally" :

And yesterday, the House GOP leadership gave their blessing to a raggedy bunch of extreme anti-government fanatics whose rally contained the following elements:

The angry folks at the protest -- which attracted several thousand conservatives -- held up signs with messages of hate: "Get the Red Out of the White House," "Waterboard Congress," "Ken-ya Trust Obama?" One called the president a "Traitor to the U.S. Constitution." Another sign showed pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust. A different placard depicted Obama as Sambo. Yes, Sambo. Another read, "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" -- a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory holding that one evil Jewish family has manipulated events around the globe for decades.

This kind of rhetoric - on the same day that the Fort Hood massacre took place - is gasoline on a fire of atavistic hate. Someone in the GOP leadership needs to call it out - before its logic propels us toward more violence and social division.


This kind of rhetoric is simply unacceptable for a major political party to institutionally embrace in a civil democracy.

I'm guessing this whole chapter is going to end badly, but I must say in the GOP's defense re: fanning these flames, one time Tom Cruise let a bunch of hookers into his house while his parents were away, and he ended up not even getting in trouble, so I guess you never know.