We're about to invade Poland

Sen. Jim DeMint must be jealous of the attention his fellow South Carolina Republican, Governor Mark Sanford is getting. There's no other way to explain his run of contemptibly stupid public statements this week.

On Monday, he defended the overthrow of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya by saying it "was no more a coup than was Gerald Ford’s ascendance to the Oval Office or our newest colleague Al Franken’s election to the Senate.” Ah, yes. I remember watching with satisfaction as the army stormed the White House to drag Nixon from his bed and put him on a plane for Mexico City. And when the Minnesota National Guard physically booted Norm Coleman out of office--well, that was just the miracle of democracy in action.

Last night, in a book tour event at the National Press Club event, he explained where Obama's "power grab" (by getting elected) has brought us:

Part of what we're trying to do in Saving Freedom is just show that where we are, we're about where Germany was before World War II...

DeMint is clearly a joke, but the increasingly irresponsible rhetoric coming from Republicans and right-wing pundits is no laughing matter. The cumulative effect of all their talk about secession, treasonous liberals, the need for revolution, and how Obama is leading us into communism/fascism/shariah law isn't merely polarizing, it's dangerously polarizing. If you combed through the last forty years, it wouldn't be difficult to find examples someone on the left making every one of those claims about the right. But the speakers you would find would almost always be fringe characters, with limited exposure in the national media, and no support among mainstream politicians. It's the right that has begun assassinating people in America, not the left. My friend David Niewert over at Crooks & Liars and in his new book, The Eliminationists, should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the dynamic at work here.

Meanwhile, Poland and France had better start looking over their shoulders.