be afraid

Many are the progressives and liberals, all too inclined to look to the next election as the means of political salvation, who may actually cheer the ascendance of Bachmann as an obvious display of the crazy that underlies today's Republican Party, thinking that reasonable people will never vote for her in a general election. And they may be right in that assumption. But each time a politician as far to the right as Bachmann is accrues power in the GOP, the worse it is for all of us. The long-term process, you see, pushes the party ever further to the right, but sooner or later, voters tire of the Democrats and vote in the Republicans in an anybody-but-you-guys tantrum. And if, at that time, the GOP is ruled by the David Koch wing of the party, we're all pretty well screwed.