Hiding Behind Eisenhower: Conservatives Have Always Been Nuts

There is no fever to be broken, no moderate leader hiding in the wings, no hope of cooperation if only dems would stop being so darn partisan.

We fight the crazy motherfuckers they have always been and always will be, or we lose.

Martin Longman at Political Animal

The point here is that the conservatives have been like this forever. Nutty fruitcakes, scared of their own shadows, seeing the seeds of our destruction in everything from fluoridated water to the replacement of incandescent light bulbs.

Robert Taft was basically a McCarthyite:

As early as March 23, 1950 — four weeks after McCarthy’s famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia — Taft gave McCarthy his firm support, telling McCarthy, “If one case [accusing a State Department official of being a Red] doesn’t work out, bring up another.” And added, for good measure, “Keep it up, Joe.”

Had these loons taken control of the party in 1952, it’s doubtful that there ever would have been a point that people could look back to fondly and say that Washington DC used to function– that there was a postwar consensus on anything.

Their rhetoric is old. Their tactics are old. Their beliefs systems have been warped forever.

For a while, though, they were sidelined.

That’s no longer the case.