Inconceivable? Here’s Tom Coburn (R-Eliminationist) on Meet The Press last week saying that lawmakers have “earned” the fury of wingnuts:

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America’s self-appointed militias. (Emphasis mine)

The party that drove this country into the ground wants to turn their own incompetence into “proof” for their anti-government agenda, and they’re not afraid to flirt with eliminationism in the process. Today Frank Rich observes

Rich links to the C-SPAN archive of Coburn’s floor speech, which is an incendiary work of hyperbole:

Terrorism in this country obviously poses a serious threat to us as a free society. It generates fear. But there is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own Government. We should not further that fear. We should not do anything to promote further lack of confidence in our own Government. Public officials must recognize that our citizens fear not only terrorism, but our Government as well. A recent Gallup Poll found that an astounding 52 percent of the people believe the Federal Government has become so large and powerful that it poses a threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Four out of ten thought that this danger was imminent. We can ill afford to pass legislation in the name of antiterrorism that is seen by many law-abiding citizens of this country as a threat to their freedoms. (Emphasis mine)



Get that? Government = terrorism. Yet in spite of his tinfoil-hat individualism, Coburn can be plenty authoritarian when he wants. Here’s David Weigel two years ago:

(I)n many important ways Coburn represents the Republican Party’s decade-long lunge away from libertarian rhetoric. He is a firm social conservative, a man absolutely opposed to, say, the “gay agenda,” which he defines as “a cultural thing that has nothing to do with gay people who want to live their lives; a product of the culture of the sexual freedom revolution.” Coburn is also a dependable vote for the Iraq war, for PATRIOT Act renewal, for most measures in the “war on terror.” He has regretted that the United States didn’t respond to the outbreak of AIDS with some of the coercive tactics Cuba used.

Fascism in furtherance of Coburn’s agenda? Water for the tree of liberty! Community organizing in favor of a different agenda? Evil fascism!