Grand Ol' Wingnuttery

Think the venom Obama has to deal with is new?  Think again.

So Crow was insane. But he was also by no means atypical of the venom spewing Republicans of the 1940s. We think of Obama facing some uniquely crazy Republican opposition but it’s not so original. This kind of hackery goes back a long ways. Of course, the Republican Party of the 1940s had more than just crazies, and that’s why Crow hated Morse so much. But add a little geographical realignment to the mix and it’s not hard to see how complete wingnuttery would come to take over the entire Republican Party. 

The Republican party of the 1940s had been completely out of power for more than a decade, feeding the frenzy of their impotent hatred.  But that rising bile would eventually weaken the Democratic party in ways we're still feeling today.  It started with Yalta where FDR "lost Europe" to Stalin, and reached it's apotheosis when Truman and the "China hands lost China," when China was not ours to lose.  There was a direct line from there to Joe McCarthy and disastrous foreign policy decisions in Asia by administrations terrified of "losing" first Korea than Vietnam.