Lieberman had a crazy rant, yet nobody on the show questioned him on it. … The two non-descript wonks who were on the show after Lieberman, didn't really point out exactly how nutty this idea really is.

Yes, but pointing out how nutty this is would expose their “liberal” bias since virtually all leading Republican candidates would not take issue with this “crazy rant” of Joe’s. Indeed, this position (as irrational as it is) has become pretty much the “default” position of the Republican Party.

Any candidate who denounced the idea war with Iran as a military mistake would no longer be taken seriously by the powers that be in the Republican Party. Joe’s “crazy rant” may be absurd, but it fits nicely with the party that can’t get beyond a teen-age obsession with “manly men” and a Manichean “good vs. evil” mindset where diplomacy is a sign of weakness.

Oh, yes, let’s remember the “good ol’ days” for “conservatives" when anyone who dared to disagree with Bush was immediately pronounced insane, suffering from what Harvard-trained former psychiatrist and Bush Cheerleader Charles Krauthammer termed Bush Derangement Syndrome which some “conservatives” considered a real medical determination.

And let’s remember all those bright red maps, T-shirts, and mugs declaring that America was “Bush Country” – they’re still for sale by the way.

Ah, projection. We know now just who had Bush Derangement Syndrome – and the worst offenders are those who are now trying to pretend that Bush is a liberal.

Until they find their new “daddy figure” they’ll have to worship the magic word “conservatism” - it’s all they’ve got right now.

http://www.cafepress.com/progopgear/452707

One of those central questions is America's role in the world -- whether we want to (and are able to) continue on what is plainly an imperial path, where we seek to exert our will on the world through the use of superior military force.

In his latest article in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria talks about restoring America’s place in the world and, I think, makes some very good observations that before we can even begin that task that we must replace our “foreign policy of fear.”

That policy precludes the U.S. from acting rationally to the threat of terrorism at home and leads to an “imperial path” abroad. He points out how all of the leading Republican candidates are basing campaigns on a “policy of fear” that will lead to policies that go from “bad to insane” and actually reinforce what the terrorists are attempting to do.

Until this “culture of fear” is directly challenged as counter-productive and irrational the faux “war on terror” will inevitably lead to more imperialistic actions and self-destructive foreign policy decisions.

Both the terrorists and the Republican Party want to create an atmosphere of fear and panic that is all out of proportion to the actual threats facing us. How to overcome this climate fear with so many people working feverishly to create more of it is one of our biggest challenges.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19001200/site/newsweek/page/0/

We used to refer to terrorists who engaged in torture as “cowards” because they engaged in “inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment” of others - behaviors that distinguished “us” from “them” – no more.

Today, the willingness to engage in such “inhuman treatment” is considered by nearly all of the Republican Party’s candidates for president as a display of manliness, an exercise in machismo, and they are trying to outdo each other in who supports “degrading and inhuman treatment” more than the rest. It is a contest to see who can best emulate the people we despise for their depravity and inhumanity.

Today, a Republican candidate for president who doesn’t support “enhanced interrogation techniques” a borrowed Nazi term to describe torture techniques we garnered from the Soviet Union is considered a “girly-man” a “sissy” because they don’t endorse the new unspoken credo of the party: “real men” love torture.

But while this party desperately searches for the “new Reagan” they conveniently forget that in 1988 Reagan’s administration actively worked with the U.N. and helped negotiate the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which it signed.

That behavior would be virtually unthinkable for the Republican Party of today, which has replaced the values and goals of being a “shining city upon a hill” with the dark desires to be the “evil empire” instead.

We can’t blame 9/11 for those desires - they were there all along – and that simple fact is the last thing Americans want to admit. But unless we do, the miasma will continue.

Glenn, you forgot to mention that “fierce-some” Fred “toughguy” Thompson is, yes is, the new Ronald Reagan and the savior of the Republican Party has at last been found.

The New York Times makes the Reagan comparison repeatedly today just so we make sure to get it:

”Thompson is a credible conservative, he has a strong voting record, he has strong, almost Reagan-esque communication skills,”….

“And like Reagan, he believes in an ideological agenda in an undiluted way. He doesn’t have a bunch of qualifiers on things when he defends the Reagan years.”…

“There are still a lot of undecided voters in South Carolina, and Fred Thompson comes with enormous appeal — I’d call it Ronald Reagan-like appeal,” said Katon Dawson, the chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina,…

Okay, okay, we get it Fred Thompson = Ronald Reagan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/us/politics/31thompson.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper

(And if you want to see a embarrassing man-crush on him, don’t miss the YouTube of Zach Wamp in South Carolina leading an effort to draft Thompson)