How to tell Republicans from Democrats

...and here's an old piece published just before health reform was passed.


On the last day, the left and the right…

The last full day of conflict and strategy on the health reform bill.

Here’s the left, negotiating with the various factions on serious issues such as abortion, Roe, the Hyde Amendment, budget concerns, CBO projections, reconciliation, parliamentary process. You know, doing their jobs, serving the people who sent them to Washington.

Here’s the right, showing their giggling-down-the-hall-chased-by-asylum-nurses insanity and wild-eyed desperation. They’re out on the Hill calling Frank a faggot and civil rights campaigner John Lewis a nigger, shrieking that the health reform “proves” that Obama’s too stupid to be president, and circulating a fake memo trying to scare stupid people on the Medicare issue, trying to stop the government from working entirely by stalking the halls of Congress and demanding that the Democrats surmount one needless hurdle after another (“We demand that all representatives bring their birth certificate to the vote!”), screeching that the legislative tools which are okay when used by Republicans are treason when used by Democrats, making ugly noises about their Brownings and their other guns, threatening doomed lawsuits and doomed violent uprisings, and screaming lies about gay HIV patients, tax hikes, rationing, death panels, killing grandma, freebies for gays and blacks and illegals, and abortions.

One of these lunatics hopes to be “Speaker Boehner” so he can have that tanning bed right there in his office, for himself and for any subteen girl with body image problems who happens to stop by.

One of them hopes to be “Majority Leader McConnell” so he can stop the government from functioning entirely.

And one of these deranged doppelgangers will be Obama’s 2012 opponent. Let’s keep that in mind. The first time since William Jennings Bryan and Horace Greeley that we face the prospect of having a major national party nominate someone who is clinically insane (although we also had a close call with Curtis LeMay and Pat Robertson).