Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. 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/2009/images/08/14/wingnuts.larouche.palin2.jpg caption="Lyndon LaRouche (L) and Sarah Palin (R). Photos: Larouchepac.com/Getty Images"]

It’s become the summer of the wingnut. Unhinged eruptions at town halls are becoming standard operating procedure, as forces from the right face off against forces deployed by the left. Politics, it turns out, follows the line of physics: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.

This week’s wingnuts are stirring the crazy pot with accusations and associations – on the right, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin makes her debut appearance on the wingnut list with a fanatical Facebook rant and on the left all time wingnut Lyndon LaRouche resurfaces with an ugly new poster of the president as Adolf Hitler that is appearing at town halls.

It's hard to remember that Sarah Palin was unknown one year ago, before being nominated to serve as McCain’s VP in late August 08. Now no longer the Governor of Alaska, she remains a powerful political presence on the right and is considered a likely contender for president in 2012. There have been times when she’s been unfairly attacked in the past, but this past week she jumped the shark in my book, cementing her reputation as one of the most polarizing political figures in America with this fear-fueled outburst on Facebook to her friends and followers:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

For sheer fear-mongering that aims at the heart of familial emotions this statement is perhaps unprecedented at the major league level of recent American politics. It should be needless to say that none of the various bills circulating through congress contains a "death panel." The outcry over her statements was so widespread that even partisan Republicans distanced themselves from her comments (in a refreshing bit of candor, Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson said Palin’s statement was “nuts.”) Soon Sarah Palin followed suit offering an apology and calling for more civility in our politics, but that only added insult to this injury.

Just as you can’t retreat to move forward or quit to fight even harder, you can’t wade into a policy debate by saying the president is going to kill your baby at the hands of a death panel and then call for civility.

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Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. 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/2009/images/08/07/wingnuts.jefferson.macguffie.art.jpg caption="William Jefferson (L) and Bob MacGuffie (R)."]

Politics is getting heated in the month of August, as health care debates cause the "tea party" activists to hijack town halls and a former Democratic congressman finds himself heading to the cooler for corruption. It’s all in this edition of "Wingnuts of the Week."

Cartoonish corruption is a stereotype often associated with big city Democrats from Boss Tweed to Rod Blagojevich. Former New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson officially entered the "ring of dishonor" this week with his conviction of using his public office to enrich himself.

The eight-term Democratic Congressman and member of the influential House Ways and Means Committee was accused of having taken more than $400,000 in bribes tied to business ventures in Africa, including an infamous $90,000 in cold, hard cash found in his home freezer.

Undaunted by the evidence and embarrassment, Jefferson ran for re-election in 2008 and was defeated despite his attempts to play the victim of a government sting.

Jefferson's lawyer offered the defense that his client was stupid and unethical, but not criminal. The jury decided otherwise.

During the trial, Mr. Jefferson's team also tried to play the race card by arguing that the congressman was disadvantaged by the trial's location in Virginia, where the cold cash was found. While the congressman’s wife was at his side during all six weeks of the trial, it appears that she was still being paid for her position at a state college in Louisiana – adding insult to the taxpayers’ injury.

Sentencing will proceed in October, but it's likely that former Rep. Jefferson will be joining his money in the cooler for a long time.

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Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. 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/2009/images/08/03/wingnuts.beck.maher.getty.art.jpg caption="Bill Maher (L) and Glenn Beck (R)."]

Professional polarizer – that’s the definition of too many political pundits today.  They try to divide in order to conquer, playing to their base and reinforcing their party’s worst stereotypes in the process.

This week, two of the nation’s best known pundits took steps way over the line, deep into Wingnut territory – Bill Maher on the left and Glenn Beck on the right – calling America “stupid” and President Obama “racist.”  I’m sure they’d hate to be paired with each other but that’s part of the fun of punching both left and right on 'Wingnuts of the Week.'

Bill Maher’s a smart comedian who unapologetically reinforced liberals’ reputation for out of touch elitism when he called America a “stupid country” on the 'Situation Room' this week.  Here’s a transcript of the exchange.

Wolf Blitzer: Do you think she (Sarah Palin) has a future nationally as a presidential candidate?

Bill Maher: I don't know about a presidential candidate but I would never put anything past this stupid country.

Blitzer: So people are already complaining that you're calling the United States a stupid country and I'm giving you a chance to clarify.

Maher: I don't need to clarify. It is.

Blitzer: Well, tell me why you think the United States is a stupid country.

Maher: Because Sarah Palin could be president. I mean, please, do I need to expand on that any more? Uh, yeah, I do. I think this is in general... I mean, it's a big country. That's the great thing about it. There's 300 million people here. So, within this large country, there are tens of millions of very bright, intelligent people, you know, the ones who are watching us, um, not the ones who are writing the emails.  Uh, but, you know, in general, um, gosh, uh, you know, this country just gets dumber and dumber by the day. And uh, I don't think I have time on your show to list all the reasons.

There’s an arrogance in professional polarizers that causes them to honestly believe that people who disagree with them are not just wrong but stupid or even evil.  It’s a slippery slope that leads to the demonization of political difference.  If Sarah Palin doesn’t always appeal to the better angels of our nature, Maher ends up as evidence in her argument about the media elites on the coasts looking down on their fellow Americans who live in what they dismiss as "flyover country” and she calls “real America.”  They both end up increasing the heat of our domestic political debates but add very little light.

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Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. 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/2009/images/07/24/wingnuts.boxer.erickson.art.jpg caption="California Senator Barbara Boxer (L) and conservative blogger Erik Erickson (R)."]

With only the benefit of thirty-odd years on the planet, I’m no expert – but I’m guessing that on the short list for “history’s greatest monster” there would be names like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But probably not Jimmy Carter.

That’s precisely what one local elected official and prominent conservative blogger called the 39th president of the United States this week.

Erick Erickson serves on the city council in Macon, Georgia – Carter’s home state. He is also the managing editor of the influential RedState.com blog, a post which garnered him the ranking of the 69th “most influential conservative” in the Telegraph newspaper. Here’s his post:

Does anyone really care that History’s greatest monster, the man who laid hands on, endorsed, and applauded many of the most heinous regimes of the last part of the twentieth century, has left the Southern Baptist Church?

And he did so now because of, among other things, the role of women in the church?

That, like most of what Jimmy Carter says, is simply attention getting pablum by an senile old leftist.

The man is an unrepentant anti-semite and leftist. About the only part of the Bible he likes to take literally is the part about the Jews killing Christ. That gives him his anti-semetic justification.

Other than that, Carter wants to be free to live as he wants, not as God wants him to.

Good riddance.

Even more bizarre is the occasion which provoked this outburst against the 84-year-old former president. Several years ago, Carter announced that he was leaving the Southern Baptist Church due to the conservative denomination’s opposition to having women serve as pastors and its stated adherence to the idea that women must obey their husbands (that’s the biblical literalism that Erickson is griping about). Carter recently reiterated his decision in an op-ed for the British Observer, and it was this bit of old news that provoked Erickson’s blogging bile.

• Watch John Avlon discuss this week's 'wingnuts'

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Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. 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/2009/images/07/13/wingnuts.waxman.shay2.getty.facebook.cnn.art.jpg caption="Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (L) chairman of the Young Republicans, Audra Shay (R)."]

Here’s one mistake wingnuts always make: they view political opponents as their enemies, not well-intentioned fellow Americans. They demonize disagreement.

It’s part of the hyper-partisan political cycle – backlashes begin when one party gets arrogant and over-reaches.  We saw it with Tom Delay’s Republican Congress post-2004, and we might be seeing the beginning with House Democrats today.

The stimulus spending spree is beginning to attract some Main Street skepticism, just as liberal leaders try to move climate change cap and trade and a trillion dollar health care reform through Congress this summer.  There is a sense that momentum must be kept at all costs and that opposition is outright un-American.  At least according to influential California Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who adopted the kind of rhetoric usually associated with wingnuts on the right while in an interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm, as reported by Politico.

"It appears that the Republican Party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success — which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country as well," Waxman said.

“Rooting against the country” – that’s quite a charge.  But it’s one he’s repeated in recent days (at one point saying the GOP is “rooting against the world”), while he promotes a new book and his cap and trade bill, which Waxman admits to not have read in detail despite sponsorship: “I certainly don’t claim to know everything that’s in this bill,” he’s said.

But if he doesn’t know what’s in the 1,200 page Waxman-Markey bill, who does?  Republicans like John McCain have supported cap and trade in the past – and 8 courageous Republicans in the House voted for the bill while 44 Democrats voted against it.  There is a need to build bipartisan support for ambitious bills.  Demonizing the opposition – or questioning their commitment to their country – is not the way to achieve it.

Waxman’s comments underscore a problem for Democrats that began creeping into polling numbers this week: The election of 2008 was not a blank check liberal ideological mandate.  President Obama is broadly popular, but the Democrat-controlled Congress is not.  One of the reasons for this gap is the president’s post-partisan approach to problem-solving.  In contrast, hyper-partisans end up being their own side’s worst enemy because they alienate the moderate majority of Americans.

But speaking of calling your opponents anti-American, few can outdo the leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Young Republicans, Audra Shay.  “I think that you are ignorant if you believe this man is anything but anti-American,” she wrote about President Obama on her Facebook page.

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Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. 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.

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http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/03/wingnuts.ny.kern.art.jpg caption="New York State Legislature (L) and Sally Kern (R)."]

With no less than 8 states on the verge of government shutdowns, political radars are picking up on the odd combination of arrogance, incompetence, rigid ideology and outright corruption that spews from too many state capitals.

This week we’re taking aim at a Democrat-controlled state legislature that put petty partisan-bickering ahead of public school kids and a right-wing legislator who blames the economic downturn on everything from gay marriage to divorce.

New York State may be in better financial shape than California for now, but the Albany Legislature wins the "Wingnut of the Week" award for entering its fourth week of circus-like Senate stalemate. Famously described as ‘the most dysfunctional state legislature in the nation’ by NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, it solidified that reputation this June with a series of tragicomic new lows, complete with byzantine party defections and parliamentary games – like one party turning out the lights while the other locks the legislative door and hides the key. Literally.

This week, New York City school kids got caught in the partisan crossfire, as new Democratic Majority Leader John Sampson (a sometime lawyer who once defended rapper Foxy Brown for assaulting a manicurist) let Mayor Bloomberg’s successful mayoral control of public schools expire. The initiative – often cited by President Obama as a national example of effective school reform – needed to be reauthorized by the state legislature by the end of June to continue.

It was expected to be an easy step – the notorious old Board of Education system had few defenders, even among the teachers union – but Sampson & Co declined to bring it to a vote even after claiming a questionable quorum from a Republican who had briefly entered the Senate chamber to get a can of Coke. This is the legislative equivalent of not pulling a baby carriage out of the way of an oncoming train – and so the vestiges of the old BOE system were hastily resuscitated.

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