Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/01/22/wingnuts.olbermann.king.gi.art.jpg caption="On the left, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann; on the right, Rep. Steve King."]
By John Avlon, Special to CNN
In a week dominated by the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake and a seismic political shift in Massachusetts, the wingnuts couldn’t help but weigh in and drag the discourse down.
Keith Olbermann went on an epic rant, calling now U.S. Senator-elect Scott Brown a racist and conservative Congressman Steve King managed to politicize the pain in Haiti with talk of refugee deportation.
It’s a cliché to say that some liberals reflexively reach for the race card when attacking political opponents. But in 2010 that’s just one of the weapons in the identity-politics arsenal. And this week, with the Massachusetts special election hours away, Keith Olbermann threw the entire kitchen sink at Republican Scott Brown. Here’s his summation:
"In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea bagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees."
I’m not sure which accusation is most offensive or absurd – “supporter of violence against women” might win that low-blow award. But the attempted call to arms apparently didn’t frighten Democrats to the polls and it might have helped alienate independent voters, who went for Brown in record numbers.
Olbermann is a smart, funny guy and his special commentaries are sometimes incisive, but this might have set a record for the most unhinged since he called President Bush a “fascist” and told him to “shut the hell up.”
The incivility award in Congress often goes to conservative Iowa Representative Steve King. During the ’08 campaign, he said that if Obama “is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11, because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.”
After Joe Wilson screamed “You Lie!” at President Obama during a Joint Session of Congress, King came to his defense, calling him “an officer and a gentleman and a patriot” and saying “he said what we were thinking.”
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After the Haiti earthquake, King’s apparently irresistible wingnut impulses erupted yet again. He told ABC News that a push to grant Haitian refugees temporary protection status is a political ploy and he also suggested that it may be better to deport Haitians, so they could contribute to the relief effort in their home country.
"This sounds to me like open borders advocates exercising the Rahm Emanuel axiom: 'Never let a crisis go to waste,'" Congressman King said. "Illegal immigrants from Haiti have no reason to fear deportation, but if they are deported, Haiti is in great need of relief workers, and many of them could be a big help to their fellow Haitians."
A common sense degree of compassion – or intellectual honesty – doesn’t seem to intrude on ideological battles for wingnuts on the right or left. It’s evidence of why the decline in civility from professional partisans has so many independents – now the largest and fastest growing segment of the electorate – looking for an alternative from angry politics-as-usual.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon.