The Extremes of Extremism

With the expectation that in the coming weeks the health care reform debate will be more about the GOP's mob-mentality tactics rather than meaningful debate, Josh Marshall makes an astute observation:

It's hard not to get the sense that the longer this goes on the more cases you're going to have where some of these good folks let slip what they really think of Barack Obama.

No doubt about it. As Josh points out, we've already seen:

... the group of Tea Baggers who hanged an effigy of Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) from a noose in front of his district office a few weeks ago. Then there was the case yesterday where a few folks at a tea bag protest outside a townhall meeting in Hartford called on Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) to commit suicide as a way to cure his recently diagnosed prostate cancer. And even though it lacked any clear appeal to the murder of public officials or even a good suicide joke, I'm still pretty fond of this case on Tuesday where the head of the local Tea Party group up in Rome, New York just started yelling 'liar' over and over at a clearly befuddled and caught off guard Steny Hoyer.