It’s no secret that the reaction of a significant number of Republicans to the presidency of Barack Obama has been a bit, well, insane. And don’t start making false equivalences by talking about some video someone once posted on MoveOn’s web site, or some comment someone once posted at Daily Kos. Did any U.S. Senators compare the Bush administration to Germany on the eve of World War II? I don’t think so.

So what’s going on? Is it the fact that Obama is black? Actually, I don’t think so: there was a comparable level of craziness in 1993 — Bill Clinton is a drug smuggler, Hillary murdered Vince Foster. What’s basically going on is that a significant part of the modern GOP can’t accept the idea of a Democratic president.

Why? I think part of it is that, in the minds of quite a few, it’s a betrayal of a promise. They gave their loyalty to the GOP and the conservative movement in return for the expectation of being part of a permanent ruling party. It’s just wrong, as they see it, a perversion of the way things ought to be, to have the other party sitting in the White House. In short,