Tom Coburn's other prayer

It's true that Rep. Joe Wilson's undignified outburst of "You lie!" didn't quite rise to the level of fellow-South Carolinian Preston Brooks' antebellum pummeling of Sen. Charles Sumner, but the sheer frequency of today's Republican vulgarities, it seems, more than compensates for their lack of physical intensity.

My, how those pseudoconservative pols are unhinging. Naturally they blame their raw and frazzled nerves on Democrats' unspeakable Stalinism -- you know, such as guaranteeing that a bad case of the sniffles leads not to your family's bankruptcy -- yet there's no getting around the more evident fact that they're just tumultuously, recklessly bats.

Of course the GOP's emotional decline began decades ago, when the New Right's commando squadrons first realized that in manufactured hysteria there is vast electoral profit. Then, in the 1990s, their fitful condition worsened through episodic breakdowns, and by now it's become, if you will, chronically acute.

On virtually a daily basis if it's not Joe Wilson saying something remarkably daft, it's Virginia Foxx; and if not Virginia, it's Paul Broun; and if not Paul, Jim DeMint; and if ... well, you get the point. As each day dawns, so also some fresh lunacy, which invariably teeters -- and this is always the harder determination -- between simple mental instability or just plain malevolence.

As you well know, the most recent occurrence of Republican sociopathy on parade was Sen. Tom Coburn's Sunday prayer, prior to a fearful Senate vote, that the gentleman from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, succumb to the final act of old age. Sen. Coburn encouraged all Americans to join in: "That's what they ought to pray."

I missed seeing this particular installment of Coburn's inhumanity live, but I did happen to catch him on C-Span the day before, explaining -- complete with graphics on easel! -- that this nation is broke and thus cannot afford to help anyone. Alas, like the miserable sociopath he is, he failed to take any responsibility on his party's behalf for this sorry fiscal state of affairs.

Tom's disgruntlement surprised me, since, as he himself pointed out even earlier this month, our national impoverishment combined with a careless social conscience will cause seniors to "die sooner" -- and that in itself, happily, should lessen our fiscal burdens.

But back to Coburn's unanswered prayer. As the Politico noted, his party's insistence on Byrd's presence was yet another sign of Republicans' metastasizing vileness: "At least three Republicans had signaled their intention to vote to end debate on the Pentagon budget, but GOP leaders pressured them to withhold support as a way to ... [force] the 92-year-old Byrd to leave his Virginia home and travel to the Capitol to cast the decisive vote. Once he’d done so, the three GOP senators voted to advance the measure."

Patrick Leahy, "the third-longest-serving senator, called the GOP leadership’s move 'inconceivable' and said the incident wouldn’t have happened in the past."

Dick Durbin, the assistant majority leader, grieved that in the person of Tom Coburn Republicans had "crossed the line"; yet as even the indefatigably cynical Dana Milbank reminded us, "Actually, the line was crossed long ago, during the summer of death panels and socialists."

Or, the year of invented war. Or, the year of government's shutdown. Or, seamless, decades-long warnings of imminent cultural collapse because two like people wish to get married or because Johnnie can't mimic an official school prayer. Or ... well, again, you get the point.

Which leads us back to Mr. Coburn, whom I'll praise for getting at least one thing -- something of much broader ramifications -- correct last Saturday: "The crisis of confidence in this country is now at an apex that [we have] not seen in over 150 years, and that lack of confidence undermines the ability of legitimate governance. There's a lot of people out there today who ... will say, 'I give up on my government,' and rightly so."

And that, friends, as played out through their sundry methods of madness, has been Republicans' objective since they went pseudoconservatively crazy in the 1960s and '70s.

Coburn and his fellow rightists couldn't be happier; and indeed, some unknown portion -- one hopes it's only a sliver -- of the left has now joined the fun.

That leads us, finally, to Frank Rich's observation last Sunday, which I choose to read as more a concurring lament than a differing analysis from mine: "Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger [Wood's] public image -- a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything."

And in that, the right wins -- in fact, the left hands it the victory. The ultimate game, set, and match.