Craziest Republican of the Day: Wally Herger

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Rep. Wally Herger of California is, not to put too fine a word on it, insane. Speaking at a town hall a few days ago, he said this:

Our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today.

Um... really?

The Democratic health-care reform package, which may or may not end up including a public option, is more of a threat to American democracy than Nazism, Soviet Communism, and Islamist jihadism?

Going back further, it's more of a threat than secession, slavery, and civil war?

Even further, it's more of a threat than anything and everything the republic faced in its early days?

Fearmongering hyperbole doesn't get much more idiotic than this, but, clearly, Herger is a special sort of crazy.

Not that he's all that special, mind you. After all, he's like so many on the right these days, those who have turned opposition to reform into a propaganda-filled, lie-based battle for the ideological soul of America, as if somehow denying adequate health care to millions upon millions of people and ensuring the gross maximization of profit for a greedy, bottom-line-based industry is what America is all about.