Rid me of this meddlesome priest!

So what did we learn tonight?

First, the PA-12 race was a must-win for the Republicans, it went for McCain in 2008, the GOP spent a ton of money to grab this seat…and they lost by a touchdown.

Second, all the fears that the Democrats would lag between the GOP in turnout and enthusiasm didn’t pan out. Democrats are energized and pissed off.

Third, the Republican tactics haven’t changed. Goon squads working for Rand Paul in Kentucky were caught repeatedly, buying and selling votes, bullying and intimidating voters, and illegally demanding to look at voting machines. The police had to make arrests and eject these thugs from the polling places; the FBI will probably become involved. And keep in mind, this is the Kentucky police – hardly the Socialist Internationale.

And for the fourth lesson, we must go back to the year 1170.




Eight hundred years ago, the most powerful man in Europe, the leader of the political order of the western world, had a problem. A young upstart was challenging the leader’s political power, by standing on the law. Finally, fed up, the leader, King Henry II, bellowed….

"What miserable cowards have I nourished and brought up in my household, that no one will rid me of this meddlesome priest!"

Four of his buddies took him literally, hopped on their horses, rode off to Canterbury, and killed the upstart, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Afterwards, Henry insisted “I didn’t really mean for those guys to actually, ya know, kill him!! Ya gotta believe me!” But no one believed him. Henry’s name was Mud, and Becket went on to become a beloved saint.


How narrowly has history repeated itself!

The defenders of the established power structure, the GOP apologists for BP and Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and Enron and Haliburton and Blackwater, have essentially put a price on the head of the upstart, Obama, and his evil minions.

There have already been many efforts by Republican leaders to suggest that it is okay to use violence against Democrats, if Democrats insist on, ya know, actually running the government as they were elected to do. Followed, unsurprisingly, by violent attacks. They particularly pushed that argument after the Democrats passed health reform – the national GOP addressing the terrorist attack on the wife and kids of a Congressman’s brother by implying that it’s all Congressman Perriello’s fault for voting for health care, Fox News arguing that the Democrats should expect the violence and threats because they had the nerve to pass health reform, Boehner implying that the violence was the Democrats’ fault for daring to pass the health bill, and saying a Democratic colleague is a “dead man”. And so forth. And then bricks are thrown at windows, guys how up at Obama events with guns, etc etc.

And today, the day Americans began to exercise their constitutional rights to make their choices for the 2010 midterm races, the Republican fatwas have returned.

Newt Gingrich, one of the viable GOP candidates for the 2012 presidential nomination, has a new book coming out, called “To Save America: Abolishing Obama's Socialist State and Restoring Our Unique American Way”. In the book he repeatedly advances the notion that Obama is one step away from..Hitler. He argues that the evil Obama regime threatens America as much as Nazi Germany or the Russians. “The degree to which the secular-socialist left represents a fundamental replacement of America, a very different world view, a very different outcome, I think is a very serious threat to our way of life…If you can get $757 billion out of the Congress and no elected official has even read the bill, that's the behavior of a Chicago-style machine.”

In other words, Obama not only equals Hitler, he also equals Public Enemy Number One, Al Capone. People we put on Wanted posters decades ago. Dead or alive!

A teacher in Alabama has been teaching his kids geometry with an example that involves assassinating the President: "He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,' " a student reported.

And a GOP House candidate in California wants to shoot, not just Obama, but all liberals: “If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to “thin” the herd.”


So let’s string together all these Republican talking points:

Obama = Hitler + Capone

Kill Obama!

Kill Liberals!

…Hardy har har….we were just kidding, folks! Hey, you four guys in the back with the tinfoil hats and the shotguns…where ya going? We didn’t really mean for you to kill anybody!

Dang. Wonder where they went.

Off to make Obama a martyred saint, if history is any judge.