infecting a large swath of America with a bad case of right-wing foaming at the mouth rabies.

I'm not sure how big the swath is.

Clearly, the news media that loves nothing better than confrontations and fights will present the extremists as something as a sizable number. That gives them cover for wasting air time to broadcast it.

The right, and its talk show and networking supporters, want nothing more than to be considered a "large swath," just as much as they want to be seen as the reason that President Obama modifies, if he does, any of his health care proposals.

Inevitably, all that will matter is what takes place on election day in 2010 and 2012.

For all the incessant media coverage of the town halls and other protests, I'm failing to see a surge in numbers of those who are either becoming members of the RNC, or leaning in that direction politically.

But I am talking to moderate Republicans and those who lean Republican who feel a greater and greater disconnect between themselves and the "conservatives leaders" as they are seen and heard in the media.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.
President Abraham Lincoln 1862

That is scary. What can we do?

Perpetually Nein,

I saw a bumper sticker once:

We don't have homes for all of them.
Please Spay or Neuter your Republicans

Visit us at:

The Home

Funny you put it that way, 9. I was going to comment that that is exactly how I keep reading the headline. Also, notice the comma that sets apart my first sentence with the person's name I am addressing. Punctuation helps.

We can't say that we're surprised, especially living in our part of the world. But here's an interesting addition to this point.
(link...)

Cenk Uygur of the young Turks recently had an interesting take on the matter of gun-carrying in a place where the President is present. Noting that the Secret Service insists that such occurrences are infrequent and manageable, he asks how they would handle a situation in which a hundred of them showed up outside with semi-automatic rifles shouldered and nines strapped to their thighs.

It doesn't take a moment of thought to know what would have happened to someone showing up at a Bush rally armed, not even in a protest zone five miles away.

Far too much of the hostility arises simply from the idea of a black man in the White House sitting in the oval office chair rather than in the driver's seat of a limousine.