The thing is, it’s crazy, but crazy like a fox. What’s important here isn’t that the majority of us think these guys are nuts. Rather, we have yet another GOP leader speaking to his base and repeating the key word “socialist,” mixed with a juicy threat to your children (which the GOP usually reserves for gay-baiting, but it’s also useful when stirring up hate against a black man). The goal is to further radicalize the GOP base, period. Why? Because Democrats have proven that the rabidization of the tea bag class works.

The Republicans have sent their paranoid minions to townhall meetings across the country and not just scared the bejeesus out of Democrats, but they’ve effectively knocked the health care reform express off the tracks. Unless Democrats take this extremism on, and embarrass the GOP into stopping the (literal) madness, it’s only going to continue, and will probably even ramp up some, causing even more consternation among Democrats, and more damage to our agenda. (Here’s what Obama is actually doing with the kids next week.)