"an unholy alliance between plutocrats, fascists and fundies"

Driftglass takes on Alan Keyes' craziness and uses it to excoriate conservatives in general, writing that "as far as I can see, about all that's keeping 'Alan Keyes: Conservative spokesman' from becoming 'Alan Keyes: All-day-subway-rider-who-screams-at-strangers-about-fluoridation' are several nice suits and a stipend from whatever fascist 'think tank' pays his room and board:"

On the other hand, Tom DeLay spent years using very real power to inflict very real damage on the United States while Conservatives cheered him on, so how exactly are Keyes' ravings any worse than any of the million, sociopathic rants delivered by "The Hammer" over the last quarter century?

Or Newt Gingrich counseling Republicans everywhere to incant "Democrats are traitors" every time they got near a microphone?

Or endless headlines about Vince Foster's "murder"?

The drug-smuggling Clintons?

The mass-murdering Clintons?

[...]

Conservatism in America was not somehow captured, cruelly tortured and then killed by that vile George Bush in 2003; Conservatism was born fucked up and in sin and has been an unholy alliance between plutocrats, fascists and fundies since it toddled out of the cradle and decided that George Wallace was a cultural hero to be emulated instead of a cultural cancer to be excised. And your so-called "responsible, leading members of the Republican party" have been dining lavishly out on scurrilous, Wallace-and-Keyes-style lynch-mob-goading language since I was in high school.

It is no longer productive to pretend a cavalry of responsible grownups from the Right is going to arrive and scold and shame people like Alan Keyes into shutting the fuck up. Keyes isn't capable of shame and Keyes isn't the problem: he is merely the latest high-profile ugly symptom of a disease that the Right -- your Right -- has always nurtured and cultivated.

On the other hand, responsible grownups on the Left have already wasted decades of time and energy and money and adjectives trying to warn people like you about people like Keyes and the calamitous arc your movement was following by embracing people like Keyes.

Driftglass has a follow-up piece here, and it's not any kinder.