You should write an how to guide about "Fifty years of left-wing elitism". Go out and find random quotes from anybody that sounds crazy then group them with all of the people that you hate and label them all as nuts. Make sure you find the absolute craziest one and call that person the leader of whatever movement you hate the most. Then blame Fox News for publicizing it.

Jay, you are being lazy. Both political parties have a long history of predicting their opposition desires the worst for the country. What is unfortunate is weak kneed moderates like yourself are so predictably and reflexively respond to the "FoxNews" stereotype. When ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC are each committed defenders and mouthpieces of the Democratic Party you'd think the finger pointing who be at them, and not at the one network that stands apart.

Personally, I don't care for any of them but I'm sufficiently open minded to appreciate the need for there to be a diversity of political opinion in the press & media.

Help desk: You're right, "death panels" and "Obama is a Kenyan" are TOTALLY different from all that other stuff. Look, if you want to criticize the health plan because it doesn't include tort reform, fine. If you would like to see more leeway for individual health choice, great. Let's talk about that. If you think the plan is unaffordable for the country -- excellent point. But then how do you propose to control costs in the program we already have -- Medicare? There is a difference between legitimate, constructive conservative opposition to the health plan and nutty, poison extremism. It's the same as the difference between Ward Churchill (extreme ranter) and Al Gore (intellegent liberal) on the left. If you can't see the difference, look a little harder. JH

This goes back a long way with Republicans. As soon as Lincoln was buried, they started "waving the bloody shirt", tarring Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."
The GOP was the dominant party from 1860 to 1932 and from 1980 to 2008. Rove, Norquist & Co. plotted to make America a one-party country and return us to 1896.
There seems to be nothing low enough for the wingnuts to try.

Jay--The lineage is, at least in one case, not only ideologically descended from far-right '50's era conspiracies, but is also, in some sense, biologically descended from the creators of those conspiracies as well.

I am certain that you're familiar with the ads featuring Shona Holmes, a Canadian woman who allegedly survived a brain tumor only because she left the Canadian health system and paid, out of her own pocket, for health care in the US. It made a great story except that she did not have a brain tumor. The full debunking can be found here:

http://www.factcheck.org/politics/print_canadian_straw_man.html

What's more germane to the present discussion is the sponsor of the ad. The "named" sponsor is "patientsunitednow.org." A quick check with whois.net uncovers the fact that the domain name "patientsunitednow.org" is owned by Americans for Prosperity located at 1726 M Street NW in Washington, D.C. In other words, it's a front organization.

A check of Americans for Prosperity with SourceWatch uncovers the fact that it, in turn, is little more than an front for the political activities of the Koch family. (AFP's concern with health care is evidenced by its advocacy of pro-tobacco industry positions on issues like cigarette taxes and clean indoor air laws. It worked around the U.S. in recent years to defeat both smokefree workplace laws and cigarette excise tax increases.)

The current heads of the Koch family are two brothers, David and Charles Koch, who own Koch Industries, an oil, gas, and chemical concern founded by their father, Fred Koch.

And Fred Koch? Well, he was a charter member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society in 1958. See here:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Claude_R._Lambe_Charitable_Foundation

So, if the right-wing tactics sound familiar, perhaps it's because the right-wing nuts have not fallen far from the ol' Birch tree.