The lunatic face of the Republican party

I was in a grocery store the other day and noticed a copy of Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America, the latest hate-book from Ann Coulter. I picked it up, randonly opened it and read a sentence saying that Democratic campaigns are a contest to see who the biggest "pussy" is because "liberals" whine about being attacked by "conservative" media despite "liberals" being in control of a "liberal media behemoth." This is obviously part of Coulter's long time habit of characterizing "liberals" as feminine or homosexual (see here for a recent example) and "conservatives" in racialist sounding terms as manly, strong, and virtuous; while simultaneously ranting about a Liberal media conspiracy in a manner that sounds reminiscent of racist rants about a Jewish media conspiracy.*

Meanwhile, over at Fox News, Glenn Beck has expressed his desire to remove California from the Union.

The Republican Party, as a front for the so-called "conservatism" of Coulter and Beck (and Hannity and Limbaugh), has become a party of extremism, intolerance, and idiocy. Not only is this bad for the party, it's also bad for the nation.

*That last link will send you to an excerpt from Eric Alterman's Why We're Liberals in which he notices how attacks on the New York Times and a liberal media "elite" can also serve as coded attacks on Jews. I think this point is particularly relevant in regards to Coulter, who although not being overtly anti-Semitic (asides from expressing her desire to "perfect" Jews), has expressed her regret that Timothy McVeigh did not blow up the New York Times building. McVeigh was himself motivated by New World Order conspiracy theory and the white supremacist Turner Diaries. Anyone traveling in the intellectual circles that McVeigh traveled in will hear talk of a "liberal media elite" at the New York Times and will instantly translate that into "Jewish media elite." The Alterman excerpt is also particulaly relevant to this incident.