A call for Republicans to slit their wrists

THE REPUBLICAN opponents of a health care reform seem to have taken their cues from a Class D minor league pitcher in firing wild pitches: curve balls aimed at the electorate, stray sinkers in the dirt, fast balls at the chin of Barack Obama, knock-down sliders that force the umps to warn of ejections.

It is disgraceful behavior by a group that calls itself a national political party without apology.

And it has only gotten worse in the past several days as that segment of the GOP that was once the home of the the fringe has now spread to the party's "leaders" who washed out of the mainstream of political discourse. Some samples, if you are sitting down:

• The Republican National Committee circulated a fund-raising letter that claimed an Obama style medical care reform would deny Republicans access to coverage! Here is a direct quote from the letter:

"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you.?"

What concerns me is that the RNC employs people who can come up with that sort of crap. And by the way, who, in your words, suggested it?

OK, so after it placed such idiocy before its jury, it stepped back from it, with an RNC operative saying the letter was "inartfully worded" while denying it was intended to scare people. But it obviously was quietly pleased that the message made it to a friendly jury before it was stricken from the record.

• Michele Bachmann, the Republican c0ngresswoman from Minnesota , again rose from the ashes of her many earlier self-immolating utterances to explain the intensity of her opposition to reform. This one has taken her to new heights as the party's uncontested ding-a-ling:

"This [health care reform] cannot pass...What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass" .

Covenant? Michele, be sane for once in your life. If you slit your wrists there's no way you can reach the summit of Mt. Sinai alive.

• Finally, credit Rep. Joe Barton, Republican, Texas (what is it about Texas!) with counting his chickens before they cross a heavily traveled road. Barton believes Democrats will lose the House in 2010, allowing him to return to his former role as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. And if health reform becomes law, he says, Repubicans will simply repeal it with him in the driver's seat.

Joe has yet to say whether he will join Michele up to the top of Mt. Sinai.

This is an incredible chapter in the life of a desperate political party. And a promise: I'll stop nailing it when its soldiers stop acting like infantile soldiers.