“The Democratic Party right now is showing signs of coming apart, under the pressure of the election and two years of an unpopular presidency. But it’s not a split in two, with the left versus the establishment. It’s more like a splintering, with left-leaning activists distancing themselves from the party’s politicians and moderate politicians distancing themselves from Mr. Obama…

“Yet another tornado. The Democrats have begun what Grover Norquist predicted a month ago. They saved their money for the end of the campaign and are have begun running negative ads. They are not speaking in support of their own votes on health care and other issues. They are avoiding the subject of their own votes on health care and other issues. They are focusing instead on accusations of personal scandal. Both parties have done this in the past, to their mutual shame. But this year, with some exceptions and for obvious reasons, it appears to be largely a Democratic game. At this point in history, with America teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, negative advertising is even more destructive, more actually wicked, than it was in the past…

“What appears to be coming is a Republican rout. The main reason is the growing connection between public desire on various issues and Republican stands on those issues. But another is what is happening among Democrats—the rise of a spirit of destruction, and the increasing fact of fractured unity.”

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“Democrats, unable to run on their policies, will try to demonize the opponents with Tea Party support as unstable extremists with personality disorders. They have ridden this hobby horse before.

“In 1964, the slogan of the Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, was ‘A choice, not an echo.’ Forty-six years on, the Tea Party is a loud echo of his attempt to reconnect American politics with the tradition of limited government.

“In response to a questionnaire from a magazine, 1,189 psychiatrists, none of whom had ever met Goldwater, declared him unfit for office — ’emotionally unstable,’ ‘immature,’ ‘cowardly,’ ‘grossly psychotic,’ ‘paranoid,’ ‘chronic schizophrenic’ and ‘dangerous lunatic’ were some judgments from the psychiatrists who believed that extremism in pursuit of Goldwater was no vice. Shortly before the election, Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter published in Harper’s an essay (later expanded into a book with the same title), ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics,’ that encouraged the idea that Goldwater’s kind of conservatism was a mental disorder…

“The relevance of this for 2010? There is precedent for the mainstream media being megaphones for Democratic-manufactured hysteria.”

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Via Right Network.