Rational discussion? HA! All they have left now is right-rage and Bush Rage. I think if Bush, Bachman, Dobson, or some other lightening rod came out loud and strong against bigamy or marrying your sister, the ragers wouldn't be able to get their protest signs out fast enough.

Paul Wellstone didn't want gay marriage. Is he Hitler's puppet as well?

This is the thing that kills blogging as a credible medium. It's so easy to find one idiot who holds a certain extreme view and then claim that this impugns the entire related line of reasoning. So we have:

- a load of people have argued against Senator Bachmann's ideas
- one person (or even a bunch, whatever) among these many say something clearly wacky
- point and howl like the monkeys you say they are
- assume this means ALL in the opposition are equally wacky and discount any arguments out of hand

The opposition doesn't have to resort to this tripe, as you say. This person does, apparently. That does not mean that you can extend that to all opposing argument.

You're doing a slightly less egregious version of this other blogger, throwing out something clearly wrong, but entertaining to any who tend to agree and don't care to think much on it.

Dear Santa:

Thanks again for delivering Howard Dean to us as the DNC chair. Last night's ACLU speech in Minnesota proved, again, how angry and bitter the Democrats really are. When the DNC elects the king of bitter hatred (Dean) to lead them, it only spells continued success for Republicans for years to come.

Now....if you could add Bitchin' Betty Folliard to lead Minnesota's gang of moonbat DFLers....

You're the greatest, Santa!

Re: UPDATE

You say that you're not sure you implied that all opposition were this wacko, yet I'm not sure how you can interpret,

"When the opposition has to resort to that kind of tripe, you know several things:

* The amendment has the votes to pass, and pass bigtime.
* It's not about rational discussion, if it ever was."

as anything other than a general assessment of Bachmann's detractors.

If it's just borderline-sloppy and you didn't mean to broad stroke this, fine. However, there are wackos on your side that routinely feed on this sort of rhetoric. The big name entertainment-pundits -- Rush, Hannity, Franken, et al -- have this approach down to a science. Reinforce the worst impulses in people, craft the image of the "other" as something dispicable and always wrong (often evil as well), and not surprisingly, it is indeed no longer about rational discussion.

There probably will be more personal attacks. There always are, always will be, as long as humans engage in politics. I doubt that highlighting them as evidence of "winning" is a valid strategy, any more than the attacks are in the first place. Winning isn't always the same as being right, either...

Mitch, I'd like to see the post of the "local blogger" you reference. If you don't care to post it, that's fine, just email the link to me.

That was me reposting a comment from Mike Triggs on both Lloydletta and DumpBachmann. The comment was tongue in cheek. That may not have been evident.