Where are the Republicans of Congress to challenge these two giddy character assassins as unacceptable cranks, immediately and loudly? Are they afraid of a couple of middle-aged multimillionaires? Are they ashamed of their own impotence? Don’t they see that their silence encourages the rascals? Don’t they have a Twitter page? What do you think Joe Welch meant when he told Joe McCarthy, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator?” Does the party’s history have no meaning to you on the Hill?…

Then on Friday came the ugliest turn so far, when Limbaugh, in a rambling monologue, as if he would outmudsling Gingrich, proclaimed that President Obama’s nomination of Sotomayor was the same as a Republican president nominating the genuine Klan pariah David Duke. It was a breathtakingly stupid moment cluttered with the illogic of a performer who calls himself “America’s piñata” and also claims to belong to something he calls “our side” and “our party.”