GOP Trainwreck: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Recently on American Idol, Simon and company used the newly instituted "judges save" to rescue piano man Matt from the oblivion voters had consigned him to.

John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of what passes for leadership in the Republican Party these days must be wishing there was a political equivalent.

Those pathetic, corporate lobbyist-backed tea parties clearly didn't do the trick. They were steeped in desperation. A bitter brew of misguided outrage and good-old-fashioned hate mongering.

It's what people do when the only two ideas they have -- tax cuts and deregulation -- have been given full expression for the last 8 years and failed. Miserably.

The GOP is so devoid of any actual solutions to the many crises we are facing they find themselves grasping at the vaguest hint of a talking point or, failing that, making stuff up out of thin air. So we get Rep. Spencer Bachus saying there are 17 socialists in Congress, and Michele Bachmann warning about "re-education camps for young people," and a Fox reporter "covering" a tea party saying we need to "wake up and start fighting the fascism permeating this country."

And we get Republicans frantically and feebly trying to turn a routine Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists into some kind of Obama-led conspiracy against "ordinary, everyday conservatives."