NBC's First Read:
Republicans Gone Wild, part II: Back in late February, a month into the Obama presidency, we noted how a couple of GOP senators said some outlandish things -- first when Richard Shelby seemed to question Obama’s citizenship, and then when Jim Bunning predicted Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg would be dead in nine months. Well, now some of their House colleagues are giving those statements a run for their money. Presumably doing his best McCarthy impression, GOP Rep. Spencer Bachus said there were 17 members of the U.S. House who are socialists but didn’t name names, the Birmingham News reported. And that came after the always-controversial Rep. Michele Bachmann called for an “orderly revolution” against Obama’s policies. (“We can't let the Democrats achieve their ends any longer,” she said.) Just five months after Obama’s decisive 53%-46% victory, we’ve got to ask: What is going on with some Republican elected officials? Are they watching too much Glenn Beck? Seriously, could the bizarre rantings of this new darling of the right have something to do with this? GOP lawmakers, when speaking to supporters at home, are getting more odd questions. Could this Beck phenomenon be the reason? He truly has a "middle of the night" am radio quality to some of his rants.
You know, we had our own kooks and crazy conspiracy theorists during the Bush years. I still can barely stand the thought of people who would earnestly argue, "How do you know that Bush won't suspend the 2008 elections to stay in power?" I'd respond, "Because you're stupid, that's how I know."
So yeah, we had our freaks. But none of them got shows in top-rated cable networks. We kept our freaks out in the fringes, where they belonged. Conservatives? They're inviting their craziest to the table, and seating them at the head.
O'Reilly and Rush must be getting so jealous. They've spent so much effort trying to push their party to its right fringe, and Beck comes and laps them seemingly overnight. Great for Beck, fantastic for Fox, not so good for Republicans, as they continue becoming a national laughingstock: