Those classy guys in the GOP. Will Bunch:

Some of 55 years after the vicious, Red-baiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy were repudiated by America's better angels, the state GOP is picking up the tattered banner of McCarthyism and running with it -- literally, in fact, with this banner ad (top) on a popular political Web site. In this case, it's hard to say what is more appalling -- equating the sitting president of the United States with the Soviet dictators who slaughtered their political enemies and sent others to brutal gulags, or the cause this ad is promoting: The election of a judge to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The ad was was first noticed on the Pennsylvania blog Gort42 (also h/t downwithtyranny) -- it appears on the top of the website GrassrootsPA, which is the leading state-oriented conservative Web site in Pennsylvania. Last night, the image -- as captured and posted by Gort42 and now here -- and this ad was at top of the site when I first visited there around 10:30; later in the night, the same banner displayed a different message -- about bailouts, healthcare and the stimulus. It's not clear whether the image with the hammer-and-sickle "Obama" was replaced or whether it alternates with the other message.

It's not the first time that the Pennsylvania Republican Party has used extreme rhetoric about Barack Obama. Last fall, when he was the Democratic nominee -- as reported here at Attytood -- the state GOP chairman Robert Gleason issued a press release that called Obama "a terrorist's best friend." This new ad also picks up a theme that gained attention earlier this fall in Kansas City, when an anti-Obama billboard placed on I-70 had the Soviet hammer-and-sickle emblem with the message: ""How do you like your change now? Obama Nation. They are coming for you! The Taxpayer. First and Second Amendments are in jeopardy. Live free or Die."

My god, these are the same party who destroyed CDs and sent death threats when the Dixie Chicks said they were embarrassed to be from the same state as GWB and demanded Congress react to MoveOn's ad "Gen. Betray-Us?". But yet they throw around loaded symbols and allusions to some of the most brutal regimes of the last century, and think nothing of it.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Sept. 16, 2009 with winner Joe Wilson. Runners up Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck.

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OK, looks like the pressure is finally getting to Glenn Beck. You can't watch this rant, from his show yesterday, without concluding that the big implosion is on its way.

Beck: Does sacred honor even exist in Washington anymore? Because I ratted out a self-avowed Communist in the administration in Van Jones, the same organizations, the same politicians, the same progressive media that are ignoring or standing for ACORN now, have called me Joseph McCarthy. They have such little regard for your intelligence that they don't think you're going to figure out that Joseph McCarthy was a powerful senator! Surrounded by the trappings of power of the United States government. With the power of subpoena and the power of Congress! The guy who stood against that was alone. While everybody else wet their pants and cowered in fear!

You'd think the members of the media might remember his name. It was Edward R. Murrow. And while I am nowhere near an Edward R. Murrow, never claimed to be, let me use the words of, finally, somebody that stood up to the power, and these senators, and said, Senator, have you no shame? Have you no shame?

Indeed, his critics have been making the all-too-accurate comparison to McCarthy, most notably Media Matters, who put together a handy side-by-side comparison that's devastating. Looks like Beck watched it and it made him cry.

Or maybe he saw the tallies from the latest set of advertisers to flee his sinking rat's nest of a show: over 50 percent of his ad dollars have now gone elsewhere. Bet that makes him cry too.

But really, Beck did make at least one accurate statement here: He's no Edward R. Murrow.

Hell, he's not even a Krusty the Klown.

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(The Communist Party USA in 1947 - Come Brother, let us go underground together!)

Most people have no idea there was a legitimate Communist Party of the USA from 1919 to the early 1950s. They had candidates for various offices, from President to City Council, had conventions and were rather visible. In fact, they were so visible, a lot of people joined up - and that's what got them in trouble from around 1939, when the Dies Committee started investigating Un-American activities until their official banning during the Cold War period in the late 1940s. At their peak they boasted some 200,000 members, which shrank considerably when the Soviet Union signed the non-aggression pact with Germany prior to the Invasion of Poland. The Communist promise, at least Soviet style, left a bad taste in many mouths.

But in 1947 the debate heated up as to whether such an organization could any longer be considered a legitimate political group, with the current state of frozen relations between the U.S. and the Communist bloc countries. The fear was the American Communists would seek to overthrow the government with direct orders from Moscow and reek havoc in the process of doing it. The argument against banning them was, forcing them underground would make them more difficult to locate, as the actual bomb-tossing, agitating fringe were routinely rounded up and arrested on espionage charges when the group was legal anyway.

It's the old human nature argument that when you tell someone they can't do something, it makes them want to do it more. But there was big fear in the country at the time and this episode of Town Meeting Of The Air from April 3, 1947 asked the question "Should The Communist Party Be Banned In The U.S.?" brought a panel that consisted of Joseph McCarthy, newly elected Senator from Wisconsin. Former Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall, Edward Arthur Hayes of the American Legion and Leo Cherne of the Research Institute of America.

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