Rise of the loonies

While highlighting the latest boneheaded inanity from ex-Representative Tom DeLay, Greg Sarget at Talking Points Memo raises an interesting question:

Has anybody else noticed that every day brings palpably more wild-eyed and unhinged attacks from the folks who either are in favor of the war or the folks who are for some reason instinctually opposed to the Dems' aggressive antiwar stance?

You can see the attacks growing significantly more deranged by the day -- and sometimes by the hour. Yesterday White House flack Dana Perino suggested that anyone who's in favor of withdrawal is a person of bad character. David Broder (not pro-war, but anti-anti-war, if you get my meaning) invented facts outright in order to argue that Reid is an "embarrassment," despite his respectable approval rating. Today brings Bush, who indulged in some of his most demented rhetoric yet to argue that the public's on his side on Iraq, and Cheney, who sputtered and snarled unintelligibly for a few minutes this afternoon before skulking off. And now DeLay's "treason" charge.

I can't say that Greg is wrong; in my daily browsing of the headlines for tasty morsels of interest, I've definitely noticed an uptick in the number of WTF-ables coming from right-wing loonies. Even expanding the bounds of Greg's criteria by a smidge, we've gotten Dennis Richardson comparing gay rights to mass slaughter, Rudy Giuliani resurrecting the stupid "vote for me or the terrorists will attack" bullstuff, and the American Family Associating blaming the Virgina Tech shooting on not enough school prayer and too many liberals. I've already had to ignore a lot more of these outbursts, just to prevent the truly important (or funny) stuff from getting lost in the noise.

But yeah, Greg, it's not just you. Perhaps the stress of spending the last six years defending the Bush Administration's nonsense is finally starting to break some folks...