Radical is as Radical Does

Fringe players inhabit both parties. But while the far left fringe may have their noses under the Democratic tent, the far right fringe are holding up the Republican tent poles.

Members of the House GOP Crackpot Caucus, like Reps. Michele Bachman (MN-6), Virginia Foxx (NC-5), Louie Gohmert (TX-1) and Steve King (IO-5), compare health care reform to Auschwitz, death panels, terrorist plots and the War of Yankee Aggression; equate gay marriage with bestiality; insist African-Americans were better off as slaves than undergoing an abortion, question President Obama's patriotism and citizenship and accuse him of possible Satanic designs.

They've excused supporters' racial and homophobic epithets. They've shouted from the House floor "you lie" at the president and "baby killer" at a Democratic congressman. One, Congressman Joe Barton (TX-6), speaking for fellow Crackpots apologized to BP for the $20 billion escrow fund Obama insisted upon to compensate BP's Gulf Coast victims as a "shakedown."

But they're paragons of level-headedness compared to what's happening in Republican primaries. Republicans who don't pander sufficiently to their increasingly delusional base are being challenged by those who will.

Kentucky's Republican-libertarian senate nominee Rand Paul wants to reconsider the 46-year-old Civil Rights Act because apparently the "liberty and justice for all" thing shouldn't mean diddly-squat if you happen to own a Woolworth's lunch counter.

A North Carolina Republican-tea party congressional nominee, William Randall, claims Obama conspired with BP to cause the Deepwater Horizon disaster. "This is purely speculative -- and not based on any fact," admits Randall, who doesn't let the absence of evidence or motive dissuade him from running his mouth for votes.

Nevada's Republican-tea party senate nominee Sharon Angle posits if conservatives don't get their way at the ballot box, "people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies." That's not some conservative elixir she's talking about. She means shooting people.

These aren't fringe candidates. These are the embarrassing dust bunnies that attach themselves to the very tip of the fringe.

This isn't the party of conservative heartthrobs Goldwater and Reagan. Back in 1962, Goldwater and conservative publisher William Buckley, Jr. drummed the John Birch Society out of the Republican party because of its racist and xenophobic stances. This year it was back co-sponsoring the Conservative Political Action Conference, the most influential conservative gathering in the country. Who's next, the Klan?

It isn't the Obama administration that's "extremist." It's simply pursuing a classic center-left agenda, for which it was elected, and is very much in the American two-party tradition. In fact, the lefty MoveOn crowd is livid over its moderation. Rather, once mainstream conservatives have moved so far to the right that anything to the left of Robert Welch, founder of the Birch Society, is now considered socialist.

Just who're the radicals here?