Just now, on "Meet the Press," Sen. Lindsey Graham referred to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as "Stalinist."
And I kid you not. An agency designed to shave a few points from your credit card or to guarantee you an intelligible mortgage is being compared by a high-ranking GOP official to a totalitarian savage who brutally slaughtered millions of his own and enslaved half of Europe.
Prior to Graham's appearance, Rep. Ron Paul said on the same program that he won't rule out a third-party run, which, happily, would shave in the neighborhood of, say, 8 or 10 points from the GOP's turnout -- the few, the proudly unhinged who buy into the argument of credit-card regulation as ideological genocide -- in critical swing states.
Oh what a lovely -- and damn near effortless -- election this is shaping up to be, for Barack Obama.