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I'd just like to step in here with a brief (I hope) word on behalf of mbf, since my blogging partner Dave Neiwert has been covering this turf for about four years now.
Mbf is not wrong. Dave's documented quite authoritatively* the pattern by which unthinkable extremist ideas start out on the far right with the likes of Rushdoony, are picked up by talk-radio sensationalists like Savage and Rush, turned into books by Malkin and O'Reilly, and eventually become part of the mainstream conservative party line. So, yes, we do have to be concerned about the crazies, because what they're saying today is almost certainly what respectable GOP candidates will be saying tomorrow.
He's also right that we are nowhere near out of the woods with these people. As Altemeyer makes all too clear: they have been with us from the beginning, and will be with us to the end. All we can do is keep a close watch on them, and make sure they stay pushed as far to the margins as we can manage. And, right now, they've got a 40-year investment in political and cultural infrastructure that we're not yet remotely close to matching.
Fortunately, Altemeyer is also giving us the scientific basis that may eventually allow us to recognize their mindset as pathological and anti-social, which will both widen our awareness of the dangers they pose, and perhaps improve our ability to deal with them effectively.
Raj's optimistic assertion that the trend lines don't support pessimism is correct as far as it goes; but people who are in the foresight business are inherently suspicious of trendlines, and are very circumspect in placing any reliance on them. Just because it's getting better now doesn't mean we won't have a terrorist attack -- or, more likely, an economic slowdown -- that makes the whole thing re-erupt like an infected wound in the near future.
Things are getting a little better. Offering the country a positive alternative vision is crucial to our success. But we cannot ever afford to take our eyes off these people -- and they are concentrated in the conservative movement -- who have been standing by since the beginning to take our liberties away.
* Dave won the 2003 Koufax for Best Series with "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism," which thoroughly describes this phenomenon. There's a link to the PDF version over at Orcinus -- http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/.
