In a Wired op-ed, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has announced a proposal to vigorously ensure net neutrality. The responses to it demonstrate just how far off the rails conservative politics have gone.

Wheeler is proposing to regulate broadband internet as telecommunications infrastructure. By doing so, the FCC will ensure that everyone -consumers, small business, big business- has equal access to high-speed internet. A small, independent content provider won't have to pay a premium to reach its customers at the same bandwidth and Amazon or Netflix.

In no small part because this is exactly what President Obama advocated should happen, conservatives are bizarrely arguing against fair, open competition, somehow re-imagining this as a tax and government over-reach.

The people who benefit the most from this proposal are individual customers and small businesses, because they won't be at a disadvantage to the big guys. If we went instead with allowing ISPs to charge extra for access to bandwidth to provide content, only the big corporations and oligarchs would be able to afford access.

How does this more generally relate to the current state of conservatism? Well, if you read the comments below Wheeler's op-ed, you see a herd of conservatives falling over themselves to argue against their own interests and in favor of giving more power to the oligarchs. It really makes no sense at all. The proposed FCC rule would ensure an online marketplace open to all competitors. You'd think free and open competition is what conservatives would value most, but no. Unfortunately, that's become the name of the game for the conservative movement now. Convince voters that the oligarchs' interests are their interests, and they'll fall all over themselves to hand the farm over to the new overlords.