One is a radio talk show host in clear need of emergency psychiatric care (but is still more welcome in the Republican party than an opponent of the war). The other is the former Speaker of the House, and thus erstwhile second-in-line in the US Order of Succession, a man who seldom goes a day without being flattered as the greatest mind in conservative politics in at least half a century if not more.

One of them plans to collaborate with Hitler Youth alumnus Hilmar von Campe in what promises to be an edifying exploration of the hypnotic nature of Hitler’s grip on the imagination and loyalty of the German people, and, needless to say, the ominous parallels to the present day. (“Every day brings this nation closer to a Nazi-style totalitarian abyss,” von Campe writes, and anyone who has run into a particularly Gestapo-ish DMV clerk will find it tough to disagree. Short of the genuine article, one would be hard-pressed to simulate the experience of slave labor in a cholera and dysentery-ridden munitions factor more closely than by bringing in a quarter of a million dollars in a calendar year and returning 39 rather than 36 percent of it the US government.)

The other took to national television today to announce that the United States is under assault by “a gay and secular fascism” (it’s the indefinite article that makes this a masterpiece, if you were wondering). Care to guess which is which?

While writing the post about Fairness Doctrine hysteria downblog, I couldn’t have known what would turn up in my RSS feed within 5 minutes. But on the other hand, of course I knew, and so did you. It would be extraordinarily comforting if the highlight reel of cringe-worthy and worse behavior by conservatives these last few months could be consigned to some crazy and irrelevant fringe. But it was never just the fringe; that is, unless the fringe and the elite have merged identities completely. (Come to think of it, they’re well on the way.)