2 Months in the Wilderness = Armed Revolution

The Republicans have been in the political wilderness for around two months, and they're already at the point where the rhetoric of violence and revolution imbues much of their communications and messaging. Given the near universality of the rhetoric, this shift may well have been a top-down, conscious decision by the party. As you'll see below, this strikes me as a poor political strategy for retaking the majority.

Just to name a few examples off the top of my head... A Republican Representative wants her constituents "armed and dangerous" (on the issues). There's talk of Texas seceding from the Union. Cable commentators talk about Government Vampires, and the wooden stakes they want driven through their chests. Talk Radio abounds with talk of Obama coming to get their guns, and the need to stand up and fight for your rights "to stop the government men". Rep. Bachman thinks of herself as a "foreign correspondent behind enemy lines." Their animating force is holding TeaParties to show their disaffection with the government. You may recall from U.S. history that the orginal Tea Party was a precursor to revolution. All of this is difficult to slot into the rubric of "Republicans Love America."

Here we have a particularly hilarious example from RedState (the right's largest blog), where they rage over the audacity of the Washington State government trying to pass a law to clean up the state's water. They write "At What Point do People Revolt?"

At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?

At some point soon, it will happen. It'll be over an innocuous issue. But the rage is building. [...]

Were I in Washington State, I'd be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation.

Wow! That's even got violence explicitly directed against elected officials! Charming! And what is the heavy hand of government in this case? Clean Water regulations! That's right. The activists at RedState wants to beat legislators to death over phosphates in sink detergent, when those same phosphates have been gone from machine detergents for decades. I wonder, have any of them heard of ocean dead zones?  And should Obama start behaving like Bush (breaking laws, violating the Constitution, etc), how can they escalate their rhetoric appropriately?

Bear in mind that the editors are RedState are not marginal figures in the GOP. RedState interviewed both Bush and Cheney, after all.

This violent streak seems to be where the GOP is going. Of course, when one of their followers follows through, they'll have had absolutely nothing to do with it.