Who You Callin' Un-American?

Rep. Michele Bachmann calls for investigation of ‘anti-American’ members of Congress

In a stunning interview with Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Rep. Michele Bachmann called on the media to investigate anti-American sentiment in Congress, after slamming Barack Obama as “anti-American.”

On MSNBC, she said, “What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that.”

Minnesota Democratic Party Chairman Brian Melendez cautioned Bachmann: “The last politician who used that term that carelessly was Joe McCarthy, and Michele Bachmann seems anxious to step into his shoes.”

Yes, that's right. Back to the future.  Back then it was not Joe the Plumber, but Joe McCarthy, who in a February 1950 speech in Wheeling West Virginia claimed the US government was lousy with "anti-Americans," especially the US State Department, where he had already started a list;

"I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."

And so, 58 years later, the Republican party has come full circle. No longer the party of General Eisenhower or, for that matter, Barry Goldwater. Today's GOP has become a party run by the lowest common denominator-types, the kind of folks you'd expect to meet at tractor pull competitions or evangelical tent revivals. The Walter Middy "Minutemen" types patrolling the Mexican border with their trusty (pro-American) firearms hanging on their hips.

These kind of low-grade intellects who fear anything new or anyone different from themselves, have always been around. The only difference is that, over the past 20 years or so, the GOP decided that there were enough of these knuckle-draggers out there to swing elections their direction and that all they had to do to get them to ballot box was to stir them up enough: "the minorities are living off your tax dollars," "the United Nations is an anti-American front organization," "Europeans are trying to rope America into a world government," "atheist liberals are trying to drive God from public life,"  and now, "Democrats are anti-American."

And so the GOP stirred and stirred and, lo and behold, they were right. There were enough ignoramuses out there to swing elections to Republicans.

The trouble is, once they started to win elections, those who brought them to the dance actually demanded the GOP leadership dance with them -- or else. So dance they did. They danced with the devil and, in so doing, sold their party's soul to them.

Many liberals will tell me that the GOP has always been run by either crazy or greedy people. But that's not true. It wasn't until Ronald Reagan that the party started to lean towards, what pollsters now delicately describe as the "low information voter."

In the end, (and that end has arrived here and now,) the few remaining GOP intellectuals have abandoned ship, en-mass; George Will, David Brooks and last week, Christopher Buckley, son of one of the GOP's most influential thinkers and writers of the 20th century. They simply can no longer make excuses for the dangerous nonsense spewing form the likes of Sarah Palin and the  lynch-mob rabble that now populate McCain/Palin rallies. These conservative thinkers are not likely to become Democrats but they are surely no longer identified with the GOP of George W. Bush and John McCain.

 In an extraordinary column yesterday another notable conservative writer, and friend of Buckley, Kathleen Parker, wrote:

In 1955, when William F. Buckley announced his new magazine and explained the reasons for it, he described conservatives as "non-licensed nonconformists":

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