Now he does: the fusion of Fox Barbie-doll beauty, marinated in evangelical Christianity, mouthing every cliche that survives from the Reagan era until it has no relation at all to reality, propelled by what former Christianist Frank Shaeffer has called "the deepening inferiority complex suffered by the evangelical/fundamentalist community."

This FNC/RNC merger is another threat to reasoned discourse in public life, because it is a showman's concoction of very powerful emotional elements: resentment, sex, religion, anger. It creates its own reality. "We Do Not Torture"; everyone in Gitmo was the "Worst of the Worst"; the stimulus lowered growth; all the debt is Obama's fault; Obama is a Muslim and non-American; the White House is stacked with the Islamist/socialist enemy within; if we had not bailed out the banks, we would be roaring back from the recession; Obama wants to ignore the war in order to effect a radical transformation of America into some kind of scary version of France and Waziristan. And on and on. I'm not exaggerating. Listen to these maniacs.

The last idea was fomented by Dick Cheney. And they are waiting for their moment: another terrorist attack that they will blame on the deliberate negligence of Barack Obama. Then the Dolchstoss card, played only faintly so far by Cheney and Giuliani, will be played with a crudeness and radicalism that could well be explosive. You think they won't pull that trigger? Dream on.

This new political-media conglomerate endorses a supreme executive unrestrained in his or her conduct of the war against Islam (for that is the real import of the Giuliani complaint), and empowered to seize anyone anywhere and torture them in the name of national security. It is also critically connected to the settlement movement in the West Bank - for Palin's vision of more and more Jewish population expanding outwards in that region is part of the plan for the End-Times. Hence its belief in waging war on Iran.

Non-believing people have a hard time swallowing all this. It seems so wacko. Religious people who have had any experience of fundamentalism in their lives know it all too well.

Forget the RNC, Michael Steele or John Boehner. Ignore Romney.The new RNC is FNC. Roger Ailes is creating a new political entity that could redefine the right in America for a generation, and if it gets to power, will make the two terms of George W. Bush look like a golden era. No one in the GOP can stop this. Because Ailes now has their entire base in his hands. What he frames they will believe. When McCain surrendered to Palin, it was his last - and unintended - blow to a sane or responsible conservatism.

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