Extremist rhetoric won't rebuild GOP

with regard to what the policy of our government will be.

I don't know what's wrong with people - are they just stupid?  Do they just not know how to think anymore?  Do they just not care?

"However, Beck's paranoid style is seeping into the discourse of conservative politics, which should be of concern to Republicans."

After the 1936 election, Coughlin increasingly expressed sympathy for the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini as an antidote to Bolshevism.[15] His CBS radio broadcasts became suffused with antisemitic themes. He blamed the Depression on an "international conspiracy of Jewish bankers", and also claimed that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution. On November 27, 1938, he said "There can be no doubt that the Russian Revolution ... was launched and fomented by distinctively Jewish influence."

He began publication of a newspaper, Social Justice, during this period, in which he printed antisemitic polemics such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Like Joseph Goebbels, Coughlin claimed that Marxist atheism in Europe was a Jewish plot. The December 5, 1938 issue of Social Justice included an article by Coughlin which closely resembled a speech made by Goebbels on September 13, 1935 attacking Jews, atheists and communists, with some sections being copied verbatim by Coughlin from an English translation of the Goebbels speech. At a rally in the Bronx in 1938, he gave a Nazi salute and said, "When we get through with the Jews in America, they'll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing."

On November 20, 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, when Jews across Germany were attacked and killed, and Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues burned, Coughlin said "Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted." After this speech, and as his programs became more antisemitic, some radio stations, including those in New York and Chicago, began refusing to air his speeches without pre-approved scripts; in New York, his programs were cancelled by WINS and WMCA, leaving Coughlin to broadcasting on the Newark part-time station WHBI. This made Coughlin a hero in Nazi Germany, where papers ran headlines claiming "America Is Not Allowed to Hear the Truth". On December 18, 1938 two thousand of Coughlin's followers marched in New York protesting potential asylum law changes that would allow more Jews (including refugees from Hitler's persecution) into the US, chanting, "Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!" and "Wait until Hitler comes over here!" The protests continued for several months.

Coughlin had 40 million listeners in 1936.

Beck has 2 million viewers in 2009.

I think he has to be very daring, [but] I think he plays it very safe, very cautious, which is probably smart, but I'm not sure he's going to really be as bold as I want him to be," said Thomas, who is known for voicing critical, usually liberal opinions during press conferences. "I want to see a real transformation--a caring for the people, not just giving a $700 billion bailout to Wall Street while Detroit suffers.

If people are going out and buying guns and shooting stuff and people up, it's probably more a function of the ECONOMY -- and post traumatic stress from things like the war -- and things like poverty/job loss, than of Glenn Beck.

I've watched Beck (with a kind of appalled fascination) and I really don't believe that anyone much takes him seriously. He doesn't even present as a serious commentator, he pretty clearly presents himself as a clown (unlike Olbermann who presents as a serious person but is a clown). On an anecdotal level, I have friends and neighborhood acquaintances who are devoted, Fox-watching, Republicans, and they never quote Beck. They barely talk about him and then it's in a joking way.