Encounters with fanaticism

Andrew Reinbach's The GOP Checks Into Jonestown Huffington Post 05/10/2011 (also in his Reinbach's Observer) is superficial in some ways. But this is a memorable comment on dealing with the genuine fanaticism that is increasingly prominent in the Republican Party:

I've never met a conservative who knows what to say when I explain the reality of their premise; they just beg for time to consider. And the next time we speak, it's like I never said anything.

And even though it's oversimplified, he's right in this passage to point to the role of the John Birch Society as the mothership for a lot of the kooky, far-right ideas that have been and are being mainstreamed in the Republican Party:

That parasite of course is the Right Wing -- really, the John Birch Society, its allies, and the many fronts they operate. These people, who include Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch brothers, have been working for decades to turn back the clock to the days when business didn't answer to anybody, could sell the public anything it wanted to, and didn't mind shooting workers.

How else to explain the apparent willingness of the GOP leadership to deny reality in favor of a sort of bizarro universe, filled with claims a four-year-old could shred? Do they really think they can get away with it forever?

Tags: andrew reinbach, second subject, radical right, republican party