Branding The Enemy

While I first mentioned this last month, if there was ever any doubt as to which side of the GOP is firmly in charge (the lunatic fringe or the moderates), the answer is firmly the lunatic fringe. The RNC was threatening to bring up a resolution to brand the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Socialist" Party. At the time, I welcomed the insanity:

Oh please, please, please let them do this. While the Democrats are confronting the crumbling economy and weighing the questions of torture, the environment, our continuing wars, and the general instability of the world, let the Republican Party ignore all that and instead take up the crucial subject of discussing whether or not Republicans should officially have to refer to the Dems as Socialist poopyheads.

Well, ask and ye shall receive:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these days.

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

Two other resolutions — to urge Republican lawmakers to reject earmarks and to commend them for opposing “bailouts and reckless spending bills” — are also on the agenda, but language that would have denounced Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican turned Democrat, and Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for voting for President Obama’s stimulus package has been dropped.

Steele didn’t want the special session to be held at all. The RNC will hold its regular summer meeting in July, and all matters could have waited until then. But the special session is being viewed by some in the party as a “comeuppance” for Steele and an implied criticism of his performance and behavior in his first 100 days in office.

The lunatics are truly in charge of the asylum now. The civil war in the GOP is truly on. Michael Steele has lost control of the party, and it has descended into anarchy.

This is now their solution to America's many problems: officially calling Democrats "Socialists."

Incredible.