NO PRICE FOR THE MAD - By Charles P. Pierce

[kpete]

Back in 2010, as part of a biannual act of madness by which the magazine endeavors to analyze every congressional race in the country, I had occasion to talk to Tarryl Clark, who was challenging Michele Bachmann on behalf of the splendidly name Democratic Farmer-Labor Party for Bachmann's job in Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District. How, I asked Clark, does one make good use of the rich trove of lunacy that is Bachmann's entire public career.

"Well," Clark told me. "I'm not going to call her crazy, if that's what you mean."

In fact, that was exactly what I meant.

The great failing of the Democratic party over the past three-and-a-half decades has been the party's failure to take political advantage of the obvious prion disease that has afflicted the Republican party since it first ate all the monkey-brains in the mid-1970's. Whether this was out of cowardice, incompetence, or an overly optimistic view of the inherent sanity of the electorate, is no longer an issue. The failure to make the Republican crazee the Republican party's standing public identity has encouraged the increased spread, and the increased virulence of the prion disease, with disastrous consequences for the rest of us. Why, in the name of god, would you not call Michele Bachmann crazy? Because it might offend the people who vote for her? It's supposed to offend those people. Those people beg to be offended, and, by doing so, you at least inject into the discussion the notion that the Republican party has thrown its marbles gleefully to the four winds. A few elections later, that may become the general opinion. After all, the Permanent Republican Majority wasn't built in a day.

..........


the rest:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/What_Could_Have_Been

[noiretextatique]

1. it is indeed puzzling

what not call crazy exactly what it is? and ill-informed? and downright idiotic? puzzling.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Because the major media give them airtime to paint a veneer over the crazy core.

[noiretextatique]

4. thanks eom

[BrotherIvan]

3. Because they're all in the same club and you and I aren't in it.

[noiretextatique]

5. and thanks again eom

[alfredo]

6. knr +1

[zeemike]

7. Yep he nailed it.

But the speculation as to why they do it is interisting...but it seem as if they don't want the GOP to fail...every story created has an antagonist and the worse they are the better the story.

[whereisjustice]

8. in 2008, Obama went straight to work repairing the Republican brand while leaving

his grass roots supporters in the dirt. That was not a good strategy.

[rpannier]

9. It's why you never have a real revolution from the Democratic establishment

They won't offend by being perceived as calling names

In the words of William Daniels portraying John Adams in '1776', "It's a revolution damn it. We have to offend someone!"

Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer and their ilk won't do that.