Let strip away all the crazy from the health care reform “debate.”  Let’s pretend that people are rational and decent. Let's pretend people don’t do things like:

1. Hang congresspeople in effigy.
2. Shout angrily that the government needs to keep its hands off their Medicare.
3. Equate Obama with Hitler.
4. Equate health care reform with Nazism.
5. Claim that the government is going to start killing old people.
6. Claim that baby Trig will need to plead for his life before a government “death panel.”

Let’s also pretend that 58% of Republicans are not Birthers, and that Teabaggers don’t really believe that raising taxes 3% on the top 5% of wage earners is the same thing as socialism. 

Why do we need to pretend things that clearly are not true?  So that we can uncover, beneath all the slime and sludge of Republican talking points, what lies at the base of objections to health care reform. It’s the same thing that lies at the base of all Republican talking points: The belief that the government is not capable of doing anything right. That the government is wrong and evil.  That everyone should really, really hate the government.

This belief goes beyond ideology into a kind of psychosis.  It causes conservatives to become nonsensical, like when they want the government out of their Medicare. Even Bill Kristol can’t defend this basic point in an intelligible way in front of Jon Stewart:

In fact, this whole discussion reminds me a scene from Life of Brian:

Remember that we have stripped away all the crazy, this is the very best thing we can say about the Republican Party at this point in time: They are now the People’s Front of Judea.

I would bet that if you promise to really, really hate government as much as they do, they would tell you to spray paint the town walls full of graffiti to prove it. After all, that's what the health care debate has sunk to.