PHIL NUGENT EXPLAINS REPUBLICANS FOR YOU

Phil thinks we need to look at the Joe Wilson "You lie!" incident in context:

... In this space a year or so ago, I wrote ... that the Republican party had ceased to be a real political party and become instead a criminal gang. That was back when they still had real power to effect change and control the outcome of significant elections. Now, in keeping with a party whose official policy is that Americans have so concern for one another and so little stake in a shared quality of living that that government should serve no purpose beyond military defense, they are a performance art troupe, with no ideas or goals not connected to stirring up shit to prevent any possible improvements on what we kindly refer to as the status quo, even in times of emergency. They are a people whose view of life and their fellow human beings is unremittingly black and apocalyptic, and who react to any suggestion that some things might be made better by indignantly denouncing the unpatriotic notion that things aren't already glorious almost to the point of exceeding our ability to give thanks for it all. A lot of people look at the way Republicans comport themselves now and conclude that the spectacle of a black president has driven them nuts, but ... [i]t was during Clinton's first year in office that it was made clear that a highly vocal percentage of the Republican party made it clear that they would automatically regard any elected Democratic president "illegitimate", simply on the grounds that no Democrat had the right to follow Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office, and watching these same people fight to have George W. Bush appointed to the presidency by shutting down any effort to count the votes cast in 2000 before he'd taken the oath of office cleared up any questions one might have had regarding either their moral standards or their imperviousness to irony. With the Democrats nominally in control, they have no function whatsoever but to explore the limits of what degree of nastiness they can get away with; they have no interest in doing anything besides expanding their accepted abilities to try to tear down those attempting to run the country, and the next few years, so far as input and leadership from them goes, will likely amount to an experimental, ongoing exercise in pushing the outside of the envelope....

That's probably true.