Those classy guys in the GOP. Will Bunch:

Some of 55 years after the vicious, Red-baiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy were repudiated by America's better angels, the state GOP is picking up the tattered banner of McCarthyism and running with it -- literally, in fact, with this banner ad (top) on a popular political Web site. In this case, it's hard to say what is more appalling -- equating the sitting president of the United States with the Soviet dictators who slaughtered their political enemies and sent others to brutal gulags, or the cause this ad is promoting: The election of a judge to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The ad was was first noticed on the Pennsylvania blog Gort42 (also h/t downwithtyranny) -- it appears on the top of the website GrassrootsPA, which is the leading state-oriented conservative Web site in Pennsylvania. Last night, the image -- as captured and posted by Gort42 and now here -- and this ad was at top of the site when I first visited there around 10:30; later in the night, the same banner displayed a different message -- about bailouts, healthcare and the stimulus. It's not clear whether the image with the hammer-and-sickle "Obama" was replaced or whether it alternates with the other message.

It's not the first time that the Pennsylvania Republican Party has used extreme rhetoric about Barack Obama. Last fall, when he was the Democratic nominee -- as reported here at Attytood -- the state GOP chairman Robert Gleason issued a press release that called Obama "a terrorist's best friend." This new ad also picks up a theme that gained attention earlier this fall in Kansas City, when an anti-Obama billboard placed on I-70 had the Soviet hammer-and-sickle emblem with the message: ""How do you like your change now? Obama Nation. They are coming for you! The Taxpayer. First and Second Amendments are in jeopardy. Live free or Die."

My god, these are the same party who destroyed CDs and sent death threats when the Dixie Chicks said they were embarrassed to be from the same state as GWB and demanded Congress react to MoveOn's ad "Gen. Betray-Us?". But yet they throw around loaded symbols and allusions to some of the most brutal regimes of the last century, and think nothing of it.

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The only thing shameful here is CNN pushing another "can't we all just get along" story and lumping Kanye West, Serena Williams and Rep. Joe Wilson into the same basket, as though all of these things are equal. See look everybody. There are some black people who behaved badly this week too. That and giving Lanny Davis a format to push his Civility Project. Isn't that special? It seems Lanny just wants everyone to get along and act nicely to each other. Heaven forbid we can't have any of that "in-civil" truth telling by the likes of Jimmy Carter.

Maybe he should heed some of his own advice. I think I just found where that "great conservative thinker" George Will got his talking point on This Week. Lanny Davis--Liberal McCarthyism: Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore. From back in 2006 when Lanny was telling all of the dirty f#$%ing hippies to leave poor Joe Lie-berman alone.

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Yes... he actually wrote that. Some things never change, including Lanny Davis.

Transcript below the fold.

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George Will thinks that daring to point out the racism at these tea parties amounts to "liberals' McCarthyism. If anyone's playing the role of Joe McCarthy, it's Glenn Beck, not "liberals" who are pointing out the racist element to these protests, and all the "table pounding" on your part isn't going to change that.

CARTER: An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.

BECK: We have a former president who says, if you’re opposed to the president’s health care, you’re a racist.

LIMBAUGH: The left looks at everything through a racial prism. I’m just -- I’m just -- hey, they hit us, we hit back twice as hard.

PELOSI: In the late ‘70s in San Francisco, this kind of -- of rhetoric was very frightening. And it gave -- it created a climate in which we -- violence took place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: The debate not coming down as President Obama called for. Let me bring the roundtable back in. I’m joined by George Will, Peggy Noonan, Bob Reich, Ed Gillespie, and Donna Brazile.

And, George, as we -- as we get to this, let me show two magazine covers from this week. First, Time magazine, Glenn Beck, mad man, and the angry style of American politics. And then in the New York magazine coming out tomorrow, there’s the tattooed face of Barack Obama , big headline, “Hate.”

We -- we heard President Obama say he thinks that a lot of anti- government feeling, the idea that the government can’t do anything right, is behind all this. What’s your theory?

WILL: The president’s right about that. What we’re hearing is the liberals’ McCarthyism, which is, when in doubt, blame people for racism. Litigators have an old argument: When the law’s on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither’s on your side, pound the table. This amounts to pounding the table.

I have yet to see evidence, is there -- does evidence even intrude in this conversation? Is there any evidence that these people are racists? I think not.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Donna?

BRAZILE: Well, George, there’s some evidence that -- not an overwhelming amount of evidence -- that some of -- a small fringe of this movement, clearly there’s some racism. And you don’t have to know the motives of someone’s heart to understand when you see signs, incendiary signs that basically compares him to a witch doctor, an African heathen. We know racism; we don’t have to be told or taught that. That -- that much we do know.

There’s a culture of extremism that has gained mainstream acceptance. And I think the president is absolutely right. When you see it, you have to call it. You shouldn’t duck it. But, on the other hand, you shouldn’t exaggerate it.

This is why we need responsible leaders to denounce it, but more importantly, we need to find a way to have an honest and good dialogue whenever race is a topic so that the president of the United States, which is very busy, does not have to have beer summits all the time.

h/t ThoughtProfiles's:

A juxtaposition of the past and current use of McCarthyism.

A must watch. They did an excellent job with this mash up. Maybe someone could get George Will to watch it.

From Democracy Now--ACORN Head Bertha Lewis Vows Action on Employee Misconduct, But Warns Group Targeted by “Modern-Day McCarthyism”. The Lou Dobbs, Glenn Becks and other right wing screechers of the world should be so proud. We need a few more Amy Goodmans and a few less of them to cut through the propoganda attacking one of the only groups out there advocating for poor people and minorities that don't have much of a voice in our society.

AMY GOODMAN: The anti-poverty group ACORN is coming under a firestorm of criticism after the group’s workers were caught on camera appearing to offer advice to a pimp and prostitute. The video was a major strike for conservatives, who for years have accused ACORN of voter registration fraud during presidential elections. Republicans are calling for a complete cutoff of all federal funding to the group, which helps poor people fight foreclosures, fix tax problems, and register to vote. We speak with ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis.

[....]

AMY GOODMAN: Yet the video came out, and you had some of your biggest supporters in Congress actually voting against ACORN, saying you shouldn’t get funding, because they were appalled by what they saw. How do you put—

BERTHA LEWIS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —these two together?

BERTHA LEWIS: Well, first of all, we are suffering from a modern-day type of McCarthyism. You know, have you now or have you ever been associated with ACORN? This has been repeated in the right-wing Republican echo chamber, that somehow or another we are to be discredited.

We are the largest membership-based community organization of low- and moderate-income people of color, black and brown folks, in this country. We have been around for forty years. We’ve saved thousands of homes. We’ve helped raise the wages of tens of thousands and now hundreds of thousands of people. And also, we have been able to make sure that millions of disenfranchised black and brown folks in this country actually vote and they are actually counted.

So, for us, we know that there is a race element to trying to stop us. I mean, look at what’s happened with Van Jones and Eric Holder and Judge Sotomayor. We know that we have been used as a surrogate to attack President Obama. The teabaggers have had signs with ACORN at teabag parties, and we never even were around or there.

And it’s not going to stop. We understand that. And our work is not going to stop. So, the relative ten percent of our entire funding that would come through the government, sure, we are going to fight back against this, because we know that this is an unfair attack. And it’s been going on from the Republican side and the right-wing side. However, our core work will never stop.

And we know that—being the largest organization of black and brown folks, people of color, in this country, we know that we are a target. But we meet that challenge. And if you were to hear the racist, sexist, just horrible vitriol that are visited on our offices and on the phone, in emails, threats left at our door, hate mail letters sent, you know, it is very clear that people on the right, and Republicans in particular, are very upset that ACORN is effective and that it’s been around for forty years and that we are a powerful organization.

Full transcript at Democracy Now.

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OK, looks like the pressure is finally getting to Glenn Beck. You can't watch this rant, from his show yesterday, without concluding that the big implosion is on its way.

Beck: Does sacred honor even exist in Washington anymore? Because I ratted out a self-avowed Communist in the administration in Van Jones, the same organizations, the same politicians, the same progressive media that are ignoring or standing for ACORN now, have called me Joseph McCarthy. They have such little regard for your intelligence that they don't think you're going to figure out that Joseph McCarthy was a powerful senator! Surrounded by the trappings of power of the United States government. With the power of subpoena and the power of Congress! The guy who stood against that was alone. While everybody else wet their pants and cowered in fear!

You'd think the members of the media might remember his name. It was Edward R. Murrow. And while I am nowhere near an Edward R. Murrow, never claimed to be, let me use the words of, finally, somebody that stood up to the power, and these senators, and said, Senator, have you no shame? Have you no shame?

Indeed, his critics have been making the all-too-accurate comparison to McCarthy, most notably Media Matters, who put together a handy side-by-side comparison that's devastating. Looks like Beck watched it and it made him cry.

Or maybe he saw the tallies from the latest set of advertisers to flee his sinking rat's nest of a show: over 50 percent of his ad dollars have now gone elsewhere. Bet that makes him cry too.

But really, Beck did make at least one accurate statement here: He's no Edward R. Murrow.

Hell, he's not even a Krusty the Klown.

As Think Progress reported yesterday, the full blown descent into McCarthyism within the Republican Party continues. This time, it's Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina. At a McCain event, trying to energize the crowd, Hayes dug deep into his blackened soul and said the following:

Representative Robin Hayes, who prefaced his comments by saying it was important to “make sure we don’t say something stupid, make sure we don’t say something we don’t mean.” Republicans, he reminded the crowd, were kind people. Plus, he added, the liberal media had shown itself eager to distort such remarks. With the crowd duly chastened and put on best behavior, he accused Obama of “inciting class warfare” and said that “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

Good to know he was trying to keep from saying something stupid. Of course, when confronted, Hayes denied it.

Gosh, I guess that makes having the audio a little troublesome for such a bald-faced liar. By the way, this isn't the first time Robin Hayes has said some monumentally stupid things. He's the representative that was still insisting as late as 2005 that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and that the best thing we could do in Iraq to ensure "victory" is to convert them all Muslims to Christianity.

Blue America candidate Larry Kissell is running against Robin Hayes. You can help his campaign here. The Southern Dem at DailyKos has more...

Chris Matthews just gave Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Outer Wingnuttia, all the rope she wanted yesterday on Hardball, and boy did she make a handy little noose with it.

First Matthews tried to get Bachmann to tell his audience, per Sarah Palin's homage to "pro-American places," what parts of America are anti-American. She danced around the question and kept harking on the talking points programmed into her playback. So then he tried another tack:

Matthews: How many Congresspeople, members of Congress are in that anti-American crowd you describe?

Bachmann: [Deer in the headlights]

Matthews: How many Congresspeople you serve with -- I mean, there's 435 members of Congress --

Bachmann: -- well right now --

Matthews: -- how many are anti-American in that Congress right now that you serve with?

Bachmann: You'd have to ask them, Chris, I'm focusing on Barack Obama and the people he's been associated with --

Matthews: But do you suspect that a lot of the people you serve with --

Bachmann: -- and I'm very worried about their anti-American nature.

Matthews: Well, he's the United States Senator from Illinois, he's one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti-American? You've already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others?

Bachmann: [Deer in the headlights]

Matthews: How many do you suspect of your colleagues do you suspect of being anti-American?

Bachmann: I would say, what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look -- I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the people would love to see an expose like that.

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