The serious thinkers on the right have stopped calling President Obama a fascist for all of 24 hours to instead gin up controversy about Obama's handshake with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Newt Gingrich's made a fanciful claim that previous presidents have never been known to "rush over, smile, and greet Russian dictators." That took Think Progress about seven minutes to debunk. But merely gasping in abject horror over Obama's awful manners toward a commie dictator apparently wasn't enough, so Rush Limbaugh decided to make-up a conspiracy theory that connects the dots between Obama, Chavez and Bill Ayers. Apparently the three are best-friends-forever from way back. Seriously. And because Sean Hannity shares a brain with Limbaugh, you can bet he'll be talking about it later tonight.
That leads me to this post from Chris Bowers that helps put the current right-wing freakout in perspective. If you compare the favorable/unfavorable numbers the GOP receives (Favorable: 39%-54% Unfavorable) in the latest CNN poll and compare them to CNN’s recent survey of what Americans think about foreign countries, you’ll see Americans are bigger fans of Venezuela and Russia than they are of the GOP:
But at least there's one group of people who still love Republicans: Beltway Journalists.
