Of crackpots, rightists, and wingers: The "conservative" GOP?

P.M. Carpenter with a good read:

I suppose it's only through force of habit that we still use the phrase, "right-wing Republicans," which, like "unsolved mystery" or "free gift," is a tautological offense against our mother tongue -- a distinctive distinction without a different difference. I mean, when was the last time you heard someone refer to a "left-wing socialist"?

The right, the wingers, have come to define Republicanism, and have done such violence to conservatism's authentic meaning as to detach, one would think, true conservatives from their still-principal base of operations: the Republican Party. There is, of course, always a lag in such transformations; it does take time for many to wake up -- Hello? Calling Olympia Snowe & Constituents -- and realize there is no longer any traditional ideological earth beneath them, that they have been floating along on ethereal clouds of fundamental deception, degradation, and devolution.

They are marooned amidst the likes of the lunatic Joe Wilson, whose supreme lunacy has now earned him the select right to sign fundraising letters for the National Republican Congressional Committee; they are stuck with the likes of Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin, who yesterday scribbled that President Obama's educational policy is but "Rappin’, revolution & radicalism"; they are burdened by the likes of Birthers, Swastika-Scrawlers, and Death-Panelers.

To the extent that the Republican Party has -- because of its own intellectually arrested and emotionally unstable reasons -- failed to renounce the above groupings, those groupings have become not merely the face of the party, but its heart. Republican strategist Mark McKinnon, one of the surviving lucid ones, observed the other day that "Right now the Democrats generally get defined by President Obama, and Republicans, who have no clear leadership, get defined by crackpots -- and then they begin to define the Republican Party in the mind of the general public."

Begin? I think we've surpassed that. We're in at least the middle game. Because other words for "crackpot" are rightist and winger -- the inhuman essence, that is, of modern Republicanism.

I generally use more colorful and descriptive terms than 'rightist' and 'winger', but Carpenter is trying to be a gentleman and I'm not.

From the first 'comment' to the piece:

So we're stuck with them. In fact, nutjob media outlets are not likely to be reduced anytime soon, but instead, increase. So the insanity will increase. We have not reached the tipping point. I predict that one year into Obama's 2nd term we may see something that will make us hope we have seen the worst.

These people aren't going anywhere. Their numbers are increasing. And they're getting crazier.

The 'tipping point' may come on the heels of something awful. I hope not.