AND QUIST DIFFERS FROM OTHER REPUBLICANS HOW EXACTLY?

Previously semi-obscure House candidate Allen Quist (R-Minn.) has appalled reasonable people (and probably catapulted himself to Joe Wilson-esque wingnut folk-hero status) with this statement:

"... I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is -- every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom. This is our fight. And this is our time. This is it. Terrorism, yes -- but that's not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C., with the radicals. They aren't liberals, they're radicals. Obama, Pelosi, [Democratic opponent Tim] Walz -- they're not liberals, they're radicals. They are destroying our country. And people all over are figuring that out."

Quist seems to describe this as a new Obama-era threat -- but really, doesn't the right always think liberals and Democrats are the #1 enemy?

Why did the Bush administration invade Iraq and start torturing? To some extent it was out of a sincere if misguided belief that doing so would keep America safe -- but to a much greater extent it was because, after nearly all of America rallied around the president and supported a war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Karl Rove knew the GOP needed a wedge issue going into the 2002 midterms. Furthermore, George W. Bush wanted to stick it to all the dirty hippies who'd snickered at him at Yale. And Dick Cheney wanted to get back at all the liberal bastards who'd thwarted the Nixon White House's quest for greater and greater executive-branch power.

The real enemy wasn't them -- it was us. It's always us. For Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch and Bill Kristol and their ilk, we're the #1 enemy, and we always have been.

So Quist isn't pushing the envelope. He's just saying what all his fellow righties believe.

****

By the way, as you may have read elsewhere, Quist (who once ran unsuccessfully for governor in Minnesota) did ask an undertaker to place his unborn fetus in his deceased first wife's arms, in a glass-fronted casket, after the wife died in a car accident. (This was in the 1980s, years before Rick Santorum and his wife brought their stillborn fetus to Mrs. Santorum's parents' home so the family could bond with him -- and, presumably, so that Santorum could later discuss the incident with reporters.) Quist also proclaimed that male dominance in marriage is "instinctive," and his career as a state legislator included "an undercover foray into a sex-oriented bookstore in Mankato [and] hours and hours of speeches on the House floor railing against homosexuality and pornography." He's also written a number of books, including America's Schools: The Battleground for Freedom (2005), which claims that "the New Left uses our public schools and our tax money to indoctrinate our children with a radical agenda," which, because of "international agreements, signed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton," includes "world government." (See? We were the enemy years ago. Poppy Bush was an evil liberal.)