I wasn't going to comment on the buffoonish Jack Welch's allegation of presidential interference into the Bureau of Labor Statistics' performance of its official duties--a manifestly impeachable offense, by any political or criminal-justice standard--because the allegation was, well, buffoonish.
Welch had no evidence for his allegation. In calling him a buffoon, I do, and it's the only evidence I'd ever need in a libel trial: Rep. Allen West agrees with him.
The point to be made, or rather tediously reiterated, though, is that the right's madness is unmistakably percolating up, as well as down. Ignorant hordes repeating ignorant propaganda they happen to hear on Fox News or that they read online from God only knows where is one thing. But for a former and still immensely influential CEO of a multinational corporation to amplify that ignorance simply because he doesn't like reality is something else altogether.
I suppose you could say it's the contemporary GOP's institutionalization of political madness, a kind of ruthless PartisanThink so pervasive, it's become respectable. Respectable enough, anyway, that serious political journalists now invite buffoons and madmen onto their network shows, which Chris Matthews just did with Jack Welsh, which in turn prompted my and others' writing about it, which in turn only lends more perverse respectability to all the madness, which is why I really didn't care to write about it to begin with. These idiots receive enough attention as it is, and such sober attention is virtually indistinguishable: they're idiots.
But here we are, celebrating the madness in our own perverse way--that is, by acknowledging it. It's what politics has become. When was the last time you read an in-depth piece about whatever it is congressional Democrats intend to do next year? Can't remember? That's probably because no one's writing about it, assuming "it" even exists. Because political writing is now almost exclusively devoted to gauging just how clinically nuts the Republican Party is.
Believe me, I'm not trying to come across as someone who's constitutionally above it all. I'm not trying and I'm certainly not above it. When it comes to enjoyment of wallowing in the low, pathetic filth of the GOP, I bow to no man. But good lord, we, as a nation, can't do this indefinitely. At some point we're going to have to get down to some serious work. And yet, the next several years don't look promising.