They’ve all come down: the Wall of Jericho, the Berlin Wall, and now, in the words of lefty pundit Amanda Marcotte, “the once-formidable wall between serious conservatives and the mouth- breathers who worry that fluoride is a mind control agent created by communists.” (One of these walls is not like the others.)
In Marcotte’s Wednesday column for Talking Points Memo, she claimed that the plaintiffs’ arguments in the Obamacare case now before the Supreme Court prove that “the wingnut wing of the Republican party is running the show these days.” But what really disturbs Marcotte is that several SCOTUS justices apparently find the craziness credible: “Exploiting the obsessions and fantasies of rightwing cranks…has [been] the standard operating procedure of conservative leadership for decades now. But that the Supreme Court is elevating this kind of talk radio madness to the highest court in the land takes this to another level.”
Marcotte suggested that the relationship between the GOP establishment and the far right has gone from lust to love: “The looney arm of the conservative movement used to be the embarrassing booty call that Republicans refused to eat lunch with, but now they’re standing up and pledging their troth to them in front of the judge.”
From Marcotte’s piece (bolding added):
On March 4, the Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in the latest legal attack on the Affordable Care Act in a case dubbed King v. Burwell. The plaintiffs are advancing an argument against federal subsidies for health insurance that is almost comical in its bad faith, but even if the justices eventually decide not to sign off on pretzel logic, the fact that King got this far in the first place should cause us all to worry. This case represents the final dissolution of the once-formidable wall between serious conservatives and the mouth-breathers who worry that fluoride is a mind control agent created by communists.
Just reading the so-called arguments of King should be enough to demonstrate that the wingnut wing of the Republican party is running the show these days. But Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones went a step further and actually sought out the four plaintiffs…What Mencimer found was a veritable rogue’s gallery of rightwing nuttery. The plaintiffs were largely unable to explain their own case against the ACA. Instead, they are all motivated by the inchoate rage of the reactionary crank, a burning hatred of the president that has little to do with his health care law and more to do with fury at having to share a country with hated liberals.
…The cranks and wild-eyed lunatics of the right have always been with us, as anyone combing through old John Birch Society materials can tell you. But there has usually been an attempt by mainstream conservatives to put some distance between themselves and the nutters, from William F. Buckley denouncing the Birchers in 1962 to the 2012 election, when charlatans like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were squeezed out in the Republican primary in favor of Mitt Romney, who is reasonably sane.
The distinction between a mainstream conservative and an outright wingnut has been crumbling in recent years, however…To believe that climate change is not a real problem is necessarily to be a conspiracy theorist, because how else can you explain rejecting global scientific consensus without believing that it’s being arranged by a secret cabal trying to impose a hoax on the world?...
…Exploiting the obsessions and fantasies of rightwing cranks to make money and marshal political support has [been] the standard operating procedure of conservative leadership for decades now. But that the Supreme Court is elevating this kind of talk radio madness to the highest court in the land takes this to another level. The looney arm of the conservative movement used to be the embarrassing booty call that Republicans refused to eat lunch with, but now they’re standing up and pledging their troth to them in front of the judge.
