Rick Santorum may or may not be insane, but he certainly doesn’t know anything about history: Rick Santorum launched into a scathing attack on the left, charging during an appearance in South Carolina that the history of the Crusades has been corrupted by “the American left who hates Christendom.” “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” Santorum said in Spartanburg on...

A couple of weeks ago, my friend R.K. Barry wrote an Elephant Dung post on how the Indiana Tea Party is going after long-time and highly-respected Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, planning a 2012 challenge that could ultimately bring down one of the few remaining sensible Republicans on Capitol Hill. Well, it ain’t lookin’ good for Lugar: Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock will launch his primary challenge to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on Tuesday with the support of a majority of...

Yes, yes, Palin keeps hinting at a possible presidential run, but that’s all there ever is, a hint here and hint there, as if she’s just trying to keep the speculation going, and I remain convinced, or almost convinced, that she won’t end up running, not with so much at stake, not with so much to lose, including her status as Tea Party shadchan and party kingmaker. But, honestly, attacking Michelle Obama for promoting breast-feeding? Sarah Palin followed in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s...

This is another entry in my Elephant Dung series, tracking the GOP civil war. For an explanation of the series, see here. For previous entries, see here. ********** Michael Medved, the former (highly mediocre, if not worse) movie critic turned conservative talk-radio host spends much of his op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the right’s anti-Obama nonsense, essentially speaking truth to Republican power. He actually defends the president against “some of the...

As we get closer and closer to 2012, more and more Republicans seem to be taking shots at one another, mostly subtle jabs meant to knock an opponent, or potential opponent, down a notch or two, as well as to reinforce one’s own partisan, ideological bona fides. Take this, for example: Rick Santorum knocked Sarah Palin’s decision to skip CPAC, saying on Tuesday that she must have “business opportunities” that are keeping her from the annual conservative conference that is a...

Sign #45,396 America has a sick political system: Christine O’Donnell, one of the most embarrassing Senate candidates in recent memory, has her own political action committee, ChristinePAC. She just won’t go away. And — gasp! — she’s targeting liberals: O’Donnell, who wrote that her losing campaign sent “shockwaves” throughout the nation, said in an e-mail to supporters Tuesday that her group will look into the groups “funded with one million...

It’s like the Arizona shooting, and the aftermath with all the talk of violent political rhetoric, never happened: State Sen. Scott Beason said he’s been flooded with phone calls since saying at the end of comments on illegal immigration Saturday that Republicans need to “empty the clip, and do what has to be done.” Beason said he was not urging violence against immigrants, but using an analogy. “I did say that but it was completely taken out of context,” said...

(By the way, this is part of the ongoing “Elephant Dung” series over at my place. If you’re curious, and like to read about Republicans attacking each other, check it out.) The right has had a hard time figuring out where to stand on the situation in Egypt. Or, rather, it has had a hard time coming up with a unified position, simply because there isn’t one, what with some conservatives backing Mubarak (and U.S.-friendly dictatorships generally), some of them because they support...

With a popular, pro-democratic uprising in full swing, and with their economy facing disaster, Egyptians took to the streets in huge numbers yesterday in Cairo. In a country ruled for decades by a brutal authoritarian tyrant, it was simply extraordinary. The outcome of the uprising has been unclear, but change seemingly was at hand. And then it came. With the writing on the wall, President Hosni Mubarak, who has lost both popular and military support, finally announced that he would not stand for...

Right-wing Republican Rep. Mike Pence, trickle-down conservative, theocrat, Tea Party fave, and one of the GOP’s most partisan leaders in the House, announced last night — to the sort of triumphal fanfare usually reserved for ticker-taped astronauts (no, not really) — that he will not (repeat: not) be running for president in 2012 and may instead run for governor of Indiana: Pence’s decision not to seek national office in favor of a likely run for governor of Indiana is a...

I haven’t yet commented on Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, nor on the Republican response, but, then, what more is there to say? TNR’s John Judis thinks it was President Obama’s best speech as president. I do not agree, though I’m hard-pressed to name a better one. Not because I thought his SOTU was all that great but because he hasn’t exactly given many memorable speeches as president. Content-wise, I suppose a lot depends on what you think of Obama’s...

So you think Jared Lee Loughner is just some crazy dude who acted purely out of his own derangement, and that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence had nothing at all to do with it? I think that’s ridiculous, but, regardless, what’s clear is that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence are very real and very dangerous. And however much that socio-political context may have influenced Loughner, it is certainly influencing others, driving them...

Politico: Sarah Palin reached out to Glenn Beck over the weekend, and Beck read some of their email exchange on his radio show this morning. “Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are felling the same heat, if not much more on this,” Beck wrote. Beck expressed concern about Palin’s safety, and urged her to hire the same Los Angeles-based security firm that he uses. The rhetoric of both Beck and Palin has been cited by both liberals and some of the mainstream...

In the wake of Saturday’s deadly shooting in Arizona, the assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, with fingers being pointed (justifiably, I think) at the likes of Sarah Palin (and the Tea Party, as well as much of the Republican Party), much of the talk today is about political speech: Do Palin and others deserve any of the blame for what happened yesterday? More broadly, what is appropriate and what isn’t? At Slate, Jack Shafer defends “inflammatory rhetoric...

Think Progress: Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a newly-elected member who has loudly scapegoated Muslims and campaigned on a promise to oppose religious diversity, appeared on Frank Gaffney’s radio program last week. Gaffney, who routinely says that Obama is both a secret Muslim and a member of the “Muslim Brotherhood,” asked West about how the new Republican Congress plans to “take on Sharia as the enemy threat doctrine?” West said that, although he has not spoken with all...

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a genuine American classic and one of the greatest works in the history of literature, American or otherwise, is being re-released in a new, cleansed version that takes out the words “nigger,” as well as “Injun,” the one-word, over-hyped source of controversy that has seen the book, as Publishers Weekly puts it, “disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned...

As HuffPo’s Amanda Terkel is reporting, right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave an interview recently during which he said that the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination against women and gays: In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we’ve gone off in error...

Really, Eric Cantor? One of the messages voters sent in the midterm elections was that NPR should be defunded? Other than the fact that federal funding of NPR is relatively minuscule (barely a drop in the budgetary bucket), this is clearly a partisan move. Republicans don’t like NPR, which is for the most part a news organization that aims at objectivity and mature discourse (and hence which doesn’t simply regurgitate Republican talking points and narratives), and, of course, they’re...

I’m not a big fan of Steny Hoyer, quasi-leader of the Blue Dogs, and I’d prefer to see someone else back up Nancy Pelosi as minority whip, but Pelosi’s move to keep Hoyer in the #2 spot and make James Clyburn, his chief rival for minority whip, “assistant leader” is simply brilliant. It ensures peace, albeit tenuous, and continuity. And while there’s something to be said for fresh blood after a big electoral loss, Pelosi did a fine job as Speaker, is poised to...

There’s a movement afoot to give Nancy Pelosi the boot, to remove her as Democratic leader in the House. Even the Times has gotten in on the action, editorializing (somewhat persuasively): Nancy Pelosi has been an extremely effective speaker of the House for four years, shepherding hundreds of important bills toward passage and withstanding solid Republican opposition. Her work in passing health care reform and strong ethics oversight achieved what many thought was legislatively impossible....