Last summer, Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein considered the current state of Republican political discourse and gave it a name (new to me at the time, anyway) that cuts right to the chase: political terrorism.
The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.
Amazing how le mot juste can clarify things so... clearly.
Since then, of course, the right has honed their bludgeon to full-blown Scud status. (Remember Scuds? They couldn't hit a barn door on purpose, but just hitting the ground with some regularity was all it took to terrorize a small nation. Even so, Scuds were hard to guard against. As I recall, Patriot missiles blocked less than half of all incoming in Gulf War I.)
Against the verbal grenades and stink bombs of our latter-day Deathers and Tea-baggers, I'd say our defense rate has been considerably lower, and the sinking polls show the efficacy of a fully fledged political terror campaign. God help climate change legislation.