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(Stewart's bit from Tuesday night makes the point that Krugman makes earlier)

Do you remember when Ann Coulter was relevant on Fox News? Yea, it's been a long while, but there was a time when she incensed liberals wither her off the wall rhetoric that was factually inaccurate and cravenly disgusting. It was her shtick though and she sold a lot of books because of it and even showed up on The Today Show doing political analysis of Bush. Unfortunately for the country, her kind of crazy, the kind that attacked the 9/11 widows back in 2006 bled into the GOP and now they are chock full of insane tea party House members and Senators, who say things that are so repugnant that they make her look very tepid in contrast. OK, she wasn't tepid, but she knew she wasn't running for office or heaven's forbid, the White House so she had a lot of leeway in that regard to vomit out anything that would annoy us . Many Progressive bloggers have been writing that the GOP are not recognizable Republicans from a couple of decade ago in any shape or form. They more resemble the rodeo clowns that inhabit hate talk AM radio rather than our elected officials. I bet their political staffers have office pools to see who says the most insane thing of the day.

Paul Krugman notices too.

Say AnythingOver the last couple of days, I’ve been getting mail accusing me of consorting with Nazis. My immediate reaction was, what the heck? Then it clicked: the right wing is mounting a full-court press to portray Occupy Wall Street as an anti-Semitic movement, based, as far as I can tell, on one guy with a sign.--The key to understanding this, I’d suggest, is that movement conservatism has become a closed, inward-looking universe in which you get points not by sounding reasonable to uncommitted outsiders — although there are a few designated pundits who play that role professionally — but by outdoing your fellow movement members in zeal.

It’s sort of reminiscent of Stalinists going after Trotskyites in the old days: the Trotskyites were left deviationists, and also saboteurs working for the Nazis. Didn’t propagandists feel silly saying all that? Not at all: in their universe, extremism in defense of the larger truth was no vice, and you literally couldn’t go too far.

Many members of the commenteriati don’t want to face up to the fact that this is what American politics has become; they cling to the notion that there are gentlemanly elder statesmen on the right who would come to the fore if only Obama said the right words. But the fact is that nobody on that side of the political spectrum wants to or can make deals with the Islamic atheist anti-military warmonger in the White House.

I imagine Paul Krugman got some inspiration to write this after Rick Perry went full on Birther the other day on CNBC. No matter how many GOP Governors criticize Perry for his words...

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a frequent mention for the VP list and the governor of a critical swing state, told Right Turn exclusively through his spokesman: “The governor has always been clear on this matter: The president was born in the United States and any suggestion that he wasn’t is an unnecessary distraction from the important issues facing our nation.”McDonnell is a careful politician who has pledged not to endorse before the end of the Virginia legislative session. But the message is unmistakable: Knock it off. You’re hurting the party.Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who also has yet to endorse and hosts the first contest in the nomination process, seems to share that view. His spokesman told Right Turn: “The governor believes this is an issue that was put to rest long ago. I do not believe the average Iowa caucus-goer shares these views.”

In other words: This is not the way to dig out of single digits in a state in which you need to do very well. Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is reporting that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has also spoken out against the birtherism nuttery. A number of GOP staffers and national operatives on Capitol Hill (noneof whom have endorsed or are associated with any other campaign), in state houses and elsewhere have expressed to me how distressed they are at this turn of events. One Republican on the Hill in a prominent member’s office termed the reaction to Perry’s dive into nuttery “a disheartening disappointment, a total disgrace.” The reaction ranged from amazement to disgust. It is not a sentiment followed by comments like “And so we need to nominate Herman Cain,” or “and so Mitt Romney is the default.” What is telling is that this a simple and near uniform expression of dismay.

...Perry doesn't care. He's looking for the crazy Donald Trump vote to get him back in the race. Good luck with that. And really, why not? It's not like the media holds many of them accountable. Actually, the Republico and cable news gets a lot of mileage out of these rants so I wouldn't doubt a whole punch of senior TV people were saying, f--k yea, after Perry made those comments.