This is a tough call -- For the good of the country, you want the tantrums and consequent marginalization to occur. But it does seem to lead people toward violence.

This may be a surprise, but it's not pleasant. Quite aside from the recent signs of derangement by the wingnuts, I think all liberals/progressives disagree with whatever 'core values' conservatives might have. This being the case, I have no interest in seeing the repugs come to their senses and start doing things that might actually get them back in the game. Let them turn into the gibbering idiots we've always known them to be, let this be the public face of the GOP.

At first I read "This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News..." as "This turn toward the extreme right on the party of Fox News...".

Republicans. The party of Fox News. It all comes together.

If Little Green Footballs, one of the prime tinfoil-hat blogs, is worried, it's really time for what's left of the Republican Party as well as the FCC to take notice. These people have a real potential for violence. For LGF though, there may be some jealousy involved; Murdoch's stealing his act.

BTW, whatever happened to the "liberal" Murdoch of last year, the one who hung out with Hillary, admired Obama, and who, thanks to his third wife, was actually embarrassed by Fox and the Post? Guess the PR ticket expired on that one. And there's all that money.

From LGF board regarding the tea-baggers:

"The Democrats are smiling."

More like "guffawing".

Geez, I always thought LittleGreenFootballs was the freak-show wingnut site. Guess I don't get out sewer-slumming enough.

LGF/Johnson grew out of the maelstrom of commentary following 9/11. He didn't at the time come off as particularly rightwing. He was into bike-riding, etc. It's only a bit later that he seemed to sour.

[Pure speculation from someone who hasn't read his rubbish for maybe 5 years:] Maybe he's coming back to his rational roots?

Excellent point ericfree. What looked like Murdoch's transparent act to curry favor with the incoming Dem majority was just that. And it either worked or was unnecessary. Aside from ignoring Fox reporters at pressers, Obama and the Dems have not taken retaliatory action against the noise machine. Meanwhile it turns that being in the opposition is good for ratings.

MSNBC was neck and neck with Fox in the election season, but now Fox is back to a 2-1 lead over their competition, CNN again, not MSNBC. There's economic gain in being irrascible nuts and no policy cost as long as a Dem admin keeps working to help the Murdochs of the world more than they hurt them. It's a win win for media demagogues.

Johnson is different, I think. At bottom he's a self-styled member of the "thinking" class on the right, and the new hyper-parody of the conservative circus seems like institutional media leaders, who promote this stuff, are mocking them. If you are looking to advance some kind of purtposive policy agenda (not saying LGF is but Johnson is acting like it right now) there's no future in nihilism, teabagging, and far-fetched constitutional amendments. Johnson is a latecomer to the long list of conservatives for whom the conservative movement became too crazy to tolerate. His line in the sand was just a few miles closer to the abyss than Brooks' or Frum's but it's the same problem. Teabagging compromises one's legitimacy.

LGF can't stop it, however. The real institutional break on the crazies is the party's elected officialdom. Outside of an ever smaller number of Cong Districts and state houses where Jesus would lose if he had a D next to his name, Republicans can't compete as long as Limbaugh squawks like a fat parrot sitting on their shoulders.

Murdoch, right now, doesn't care because a cable news hit is 2-5 million viewers spread out nationally, hardly what you need to win a senate seat or a governorship. The party officialdom might care if the GOP takes a big hit in the Senate midterms. It's going to take that kind of news--not only did your party lose majority control, you lost your seat. Until then they can either believe what they view as hostile sources (polls) or rally the faithful. Thus far the leadership tends towards the latter. For conservatives aspiring to be more than the sum of their loonies, it's going to be an annoying two years.

"This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP"

Instead of "fair and balanced" as their motto, I propose

'FOX where the South gets its news.'

This did not, as John Cole noted, go over well with some of Johnson's fellow conservative bloggers. (John added, "The problem for the right is not Charles Johnson, but all the crazy people in the party.")

You reap what you sow... The party of "You're either with us or you're against us", must now figured out how to stuff the genie back in the bottle. Good luck, and thanks Karl.

"Here's hoping others Charles Johnson's lead."

Is there a word missing from this sentence?

Yes, I noticed this as well. This is part of the death spiral. And even Johnson is being thrown out of the base, they're really in troule.

What is funniest about this is that Johnson is going to be at war with his commenters if he keeps this up.

I guess it's a metric for improvement when every third comment isn't "nuke Mecca."

Didn't CJ have to run off a pack of anti-semites during the campaign last year? Maybe some dissonance formed regarding the worthiness and stability of his little flock? Self-reflection is notably absent in most wingers; perhaps he retains some capacity for it.

Is LGF's somewhat new perspective a reaction solely to the thug party's more transparent descent into lunacy or also to the fact that, so far, Obama's policies could best be characterized as a trickle down approach. If the economy rebounds, but economic disparity increases or stays the same, is the Obama method a success? Assuming that Obama dare not claim total success if the ratio doesn't improve, how long can we expected to wait?

You'll know things are turning around if the freakin' freepers ever get cold feet!

BTW, does Alex Jones really appear on Faux? (Not just stories about him, but "featuring" him or as commentator.) That would be a step even further out ...

BTW2, "Week in God" still coming out, did I miss it last time?

OK, yes I found it, I got that skimmer's miss disease ...

Look at the demographics of the meeting. The only thing missing is the white sheets with cigar holes burned into them. If this is representative of the Tea Party Movement, we're in big trouble. Somewhere in that room, or another just like it, is the next Timothy McVeigh. Imagine the even more radical and dangerous conversations that occured among the more angry attendees after the "party" broke up.

Can you say "terrorist cell?"

I'm considering showing up at the local tea party next week, video camera in hand.

For some (among them LGF), the Global War on Terror was the central issue of the day. For others, it was an excuse to demand unswerving loyalty to their party's leader. Now that their guy isn't president anymore, the utility of the
GWOT to the latter group is greatly reduced. So this fissure between the GWOT true believers and the rest of the wingnuts shouldn't be terribly surprising.

O'M,God....someone in the GOP is starting to have rational thoughts. We're DOOMED!!!

Winkandnod....if you go to that Tea Bag party with your camera...be sure and wear your ACORN T-shirt so they will be reassured that their paranoia is indeed reality.

It's all fun and games until the guy standing next to you starts screaming about ZOG, eh Charlie?

This reminds me of the time the WATBs shat the bed when Obama mentioned his grand uncle took part in the liberation of Buchenwald. One minute they're screaming it couldn't possibly be true. The next they're feeling really uneasy because very serious freaks have slithered into their blogs claiming that Buchenwald wasn't really a concentration camp don'tcha know, it was just a labor camp and really, so much of what went on in Nazi Germany just isn't that well understood.

People need to understand that while they're fucking around throwing tantrums about dumb shit, there are some really nasty people out there looking for like minded assholes or even recruits for this or that little klavern or what have you. Given the fReichtard's behavior over the past 8 years, they really don't have a right to be surprised by the repeated outbreaks of real live fascists.

When the rightwingers lose LGF for going too far to the right, you know you've gone too far.

Seriously, that's the last place I'd expect to see this kind of criticism, and it shows just how deranged and off the wall the right-wing opposition has come since Obama's election.

The unhinged right has always been with us. The question is how will our Homeland Security Department deal with the crazies if and when they become violent? That may be its own problem.

I've only looked at LGF a few times, but as kth and leo say, I think it was mostly an Arab/Muslim hate site. (Facetious "Religion of Peace" kind of thing).

They probably never were all that interested in small-government conservatism/libertarianism.

In general, it always was a shaky alliance, the Zionists throwing their lot in with redneck Republicans. But Repubs were most willing to kill Arabs in greater numbers, so there they went. Like the original neo-cons who abandoned their largely pro-civil rights and social-spending ideals for the conservative party: neo-cons then used the framework of the Cold War to argue for more belligerence towards their favored targets, modern-day neo-cons used the War on Terror.

When LGF thinks you're nuts, you are really nuts.

Tell me this doesn't have something to do with Obama being black. We have the largest spread between Republican and Democratic support for a President in our nation's history...ten points higher that when Bush was elected (even with the controversy of the Florida/Supreme Court) situation.

This country is still very racist and nobody's telling me this isn't a big part of this craziness.

be sure and wear your ACORN T-shirt so they will be reassured that their paranoia is indeed reality.

Maybe we could all show up dressed as acorns. With very large tea-bags.

A society going insane is represented by about 20% of truly hate filled deranged ignorant egoists who crave attention and demand they are the "right" ones. Many have money (Chuck Norris etc) and consider their opinions trump others' because they have money. Hannity, Beck, Rush etc have made a fortune cultivating the ignorant deranged low functioning violent dishonest sickos of the nation.

They have a basic pattern of trying to dominate others, when confronted on one issue and proven wrong they quickly jump to another subject until they find one they know more about that you and focus on that as if winning that discussion makes them right on everything else the talked about.

They constantly change topics to distract attention from their ignorance and constantly attack the character of "the other" (the one responsible for all their troubles). They have no plans (just ask Joe the Plumber) only attacks and condemnations. Their speakers are like rabble rousers for lynch mobs and their backers are always millionaires...the very people causing their plight.

The problem is never before has there been such a seditious grand spectacle of propaganda being presented nationally in full spectrum color by hate filled insane hypocrites. We are not headed for a revolution but toward a civil war of rationality vs lunacy. The first to go will be the very ones propagating it. Done in by the very people hired to protect them or by their own insane supporters.

When LGF is the voice of sanity, we have officially taken the bus to Crazytown.

That's funny. I remember a few months ago Alex Jones was a dangerous leftist who needed to be denounced by all fair-minded liberal bloggers for verbally attacking Michelle Malkin, lest they be seen as supporting mob violence.

Shorter Charles Johnson: "Hey guys, can't we go back to playing the hate-the-sand-niggers game and forget about these other games that make me feel queasy?"

As other commenters have hinted, the reason for this is that LGF is pure and simple a Likudnik site. Oh, they loved the Republicans when their predominant goal was to kill/torture arabs -- right wing extremists love each other when they have a common enemy -- but CJ and company start feeling uncomfortable when the paranoia of the American redneck faction loses focus, because they know that sooner or later the targets of the redneck hate will again include the Jews.

"After having read Little Green Footballs over the years, I didn't expect it to be one of the sites urging conservatives to pull back from the fringes and be more responsible."

That's because you're stupid. And a blinkered partisan, probably one of the worst.

For all the time Johnson has been blogging he has consistently followed a line of rationality, liberty, human dignity, human rights, empiricism and strong support for classical liberalism (not the contemporary "liberalism" which is code for statist authoritariansim).

Johnson's support for these principles has of course made him a frequent critic of the American Left, who so frequently violate and oppose those principles. So he has been ritually demonized as "far-right" (Steve's current favorite term). And, like all opponents of the Left he has been falsely slimed as a "racist".

Oddly enough, I've watched Salon's evolution (de-evolution?) since before 2000, and I've seen it evolve from a reasonable, balanced website, to a extremist, left wing collection of Bush haters, and anti-Semitism. Especially in the comment section, but there's a consistent parade of Israel bashing in the news articles as well, especially by Cole and Kamiya.

No one notices this, and it seems no one critiques Salon for it. But I do.

Saw a smidgen of Fox News today. I wondered what was qualified as "news," exactly, given their talking points.

I find it disturbing and amazing that part of the country watches a network that looks completely different than all of the other networks. It is like it is its own country. Like Lesotho inside of South Africa.

I'm not an avid LGF reader but I noticed that too. It's funny how it's become notable enough to be a news item. Allahpundit of HotAir.com gets similar treat over at HotAir.com. Most are playful which is good.

I don't think people (even bloggers) are as irrational as they are painted out to be. who wants to be around knee-jerk reactionaries anyway, you'd just keep on getting kicked

Stupid is a strong horse. It can be ridden far. LGF is finally waking up to just how far they've been taken for a ride.