Welcome to the Freakshow

Joe Conason puts the smackdown on Stephen Moore’s fine example of calm, reasoned discourse.

The fragile yet plucky Ed “Victoria” Gillespie must have been called to action after being forced, once again, to endure the horrors of political hate speech like this:

“I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading,” barks a man leaving a barbershop; a woman with him completes the sentence: “… body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.”

What, you say Her Majesty the Gillespie didn’t make the rounds of all the bloviators and take these hooligans to task for their cruel bigotry? How odd. He must have taken an extra dose of laudenum after seeing that shocking internet Hitler ad on the RNC web site, and passed out.

Stephen Moore says the Iowa ad is about “cultural elites across America who are the ones behind Dean,” who are so unlike the “middle-class families with Middle America values, as in Iowa, [who] are going to be very turned off by Dean’s economic program.”

After pointing out that the Club For Growth is run by a bunch of rich champagne-swilling libertarian Fat Cats, Conason retorts:

I wouldn’t be surprised if many Iowans and even more Vermonters wish Moore would take his right-wing freak show back to Wall Street and K Street.

Actually, the real freakshow is going to be the 527 ad war. From what I’ve seen so far, it would appear that they’re using material Jon Stewart rejected for being too broad and obvious. (But hey, in a country where a majority believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, you really can’t be too broad and obvious, can you?)

This is going to be one wild election.