Poison, suicide, quackery and servility

RECENT DECREES by the two reigning high priests of what was once the Republican Party:

GLENN BECK: Nancy Pelosi should be poisoned.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: (In a rant against New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin): "Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?"

And they continue to be defended by the servile pols in the GOP. As Columnist Elizabeth Drew observed in the latest New York Review of Books:

"Lacking any real leaders now, the Republicans' vacuum has been filled by the likes of talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, whose job it is to be outrageous, and before whom Republican politicians quaver. "

Curiously, the party of superhawks that led us into Iraq's quicksand is a different breed at home, cowering before a couple of out-of-control media quacks who have taken over the substance and tone of the GOP.