Arguably the Democrats made the same mistake in 2008, though I am less sure about that--Obama had run for President, after all, on a platform of passing health care, and he and the Democrats did just that. Nonetheless, something about their performance jarred the voters, or stunned just enough of them into apathy, and now the House, and numerous state governments, have shifted to Republican hands.

The process of overreach may be underway again. But there is something unusually unbecoming about the current Republican rapacity to lock in their victory. Their target this time is not feeding-tube laws, or even federal judges, but the Constitution itself. And the motivation behind the frenzy is transparent; this crowd wants to rewrite our fundamental law to make sure that no progressive policy--no matter how popular--can ever be enacted again.

At first, the Tea Party and the far-right were muttering about the Seventeenth Amendment and the popular election of Senators. If only the perfidious American people had not risen up in the early years of the last century and taken the choice of Senators away from state legislatures, Glenn Beck explained, "Obama's health care bill would never have seen the light of day." This may or may not be true; but if it is, is it a good reason to rewrite the Constitution--and limit the democratic nature of our system? Does empowering one wing of one major party constitute an interest worth enshrining in our 220-year-old Constitution?

(Even Justices can grow giddy. Though it's not customary for Supreme Court Justices to propose rewriting the document they enforce, Justice Antonin Scalia thought repeal sounded like a good idea.)

Since November, the rapture of victory has pushed the right wing further into the maw of madness. Now it's not enough to pick off one amendment or another; now they want to scrap the whole Constitution and put in a new one. Bob Barnes of the Washington Post recently recounted a panel at the Federalist Society at which once-sober academics and lawyers began to drool at the damage they could do in a new constitution convention. A snap convention, they suggested, could lock in amendments requiring a balanced budget, imposing supermajority requirements for tax increases, and giving the President a line-item veto. No more health-care laws in the new, sanctified republic.

The Commonwealth of Virginia, the birthplace of Massive Resistance to school desegregation, has rushed to the convention cause. Bill Howell, the speaker of the House of Delegates, wants states to invoke Article V of the Constitution to demand that Congress call a new constitutional convention. Its task: an amendment that would allow 2/3 of the state legislatures to overturn any federal law they dislike. New House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has expressed interest, because the amendment would prevent "massive expenditures like the stimulus, unconstitutional mandates like the takeover of health care, and intrusions into the private sector like the auto-bailouts." Or, in other words, it would make the Democratic Party--and possibly modern government in general--unconstitutional.