Lunatic Fringe

Lunatic Fringe

Utah and Maine repugican conventions show a party coming unglued

Future historians tracing the crackup of the repugican party may well look to May 8, 2010, as an inflection point.
That was the day, as is now well known, that Robert Bennett, who took the wingnut position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not wingnut enough by fellow Utah repugicans and kicked out of the primary.
Less well known, but no less ominous, is what happened that same day, 2,500 miles east in Maine. There, the state repugican party tossed its platform -- a standard New England call for free-market economics -- and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a "myth," sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting "efforts to create a one world government."