"Obama is a radical communist and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it is coming true. He is going to destroy this country and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist," - Alan Keyes.

He's not just a communist. He's a radical communist, which is saying something.

Keyes is a clown, but that doesn't mean he should be ignored. As Andrew Sullivan writes:

This is the rhetoric one has to be aware of: Limbaugh's "they must be stopped"; and here, with Keyes, "we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist." Limbaugh prefaces his statement by saying within constitutional means, but Keyes is not so careful. If they are whipping up this kind of hatred now, after a month, and describing this as a question of "stopping" Obama or losing America, then the next few years of depression are going to be scary.

Politics are always full of hyperbole and this kind of talk isn't all that shocking in and of itself. But as Sullivan points out, these aren't normal times. This kind of rhetoric is particularly toxic right now because we have a tremendous amount of stress among the population that's going to get worse. The fact that Obama is African American and a Democrat --- and the people who are likely to blame him for their problems are right wing gun nuts --- creates some special dangers.

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