Maybe the Real Choice is Between Birthers, Benghazi Fanatics, FOX News Liars and ARMED CONFLICT

Extremists have taken over the GOP

   Let's forget Cliven Bundy for a moment and his nostalgic wanderings through the old South peering at blacks picking cotton,  singing, waving good-bye to their children being sold down the river.  What I'm reflecting on right now are college educated members of the GOP, politicians, people who have devoted their lives to public service. I'm referring to the kinds of Republicans who buy and read books,  are fascinated finding out about new medical innovations and who don't leave dead family members hooked to ventilators in the living room hoping for miracles.

These are the people who until now have confused me.  They know Barack Obama wasn't born in Kenya, that Obamacare is a success and won't be repealed, that Benghazi is a waste of taxpayers money but the only card they can play to rev up their base.  They knew that shutting down the government, threatening to destroy America's credit rating, and supporting Cliven Bundy until his brand of patriotism blew up in their faces weren't in America's interests.     Don't they feel any shame, any twinges of guilt?  Do they drink themselves to sleep at night.  Are they just amoral, weasels?

As I've reflected on this, something else just occurred to me.  Even though they know what they're doing is bull sh**, maybe they also know something else, the rest of us are not quite ready to see.  Maybe the GOP's pretense of functioning within its time honored role, is all that is holding the country back from the brink of something far worse than Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz.

There is one thing I have learned about low-information, conspiratorial, bigoted, lynch-mob-minded  people.  They are impulsive and violent.  The more battles they lose, the more ridiculous, stupid and ignorant  they look because of  being outwitted (especially if the person doing the outwitting as a black president), the more they seethe. Maybe the GOP is terrified of having created for themselves a base made up of  even more Timothy McVeigh's.  And maybe we should be worried too.