Here’s Charlie Cook, writing a column about the woes of the Republican Party.
Driving over to the Gaylord’s National Harbor Hotel and Convention Center to meet with a campaign manager Saturday afternoon, I passed a group on a street corner advocating the impeachment of President Obama. It was a useful reminder of just how far out the extremes—on the right in the GOP and on the left in the Democratic Party—really are.
Now, I occasionally see Tea Party folks standing on suburban corners with stupid placards, although not so much since the last election. I see anti-choice folks protesting here and there. Every day I read about a couple of dozen outrageous and frankly ridiculous things that some Republican has done or said.
But I don’t see much of this on the left. There were some rather extreme views expressed at the Occupy protests, but I don’t think telling the bankers to jump out of the window of their office buildings was really an irrational sentiment. More to the point, I don’t see elected officials on the left making insane and delusional statements on a daily basis. I just don’t. Maybe Charlie Cook can point me in the right direction. Maybe he can find me the Democrat in Congress who is the equivalent of Louis Gohmert or Steve King or Michele Bachmann or Paul Broun. Find me the candidate who is the equivalent of Todd Akin or Christine O’Donnell or Ken Buck or Richard Murdoch. I’m sure he can find me some state senator who’s mentally ill. I think we have one of those out in Nevada at the moment. But, really, I just cannot see that the left in this country is extreme at all.
