I appreciate liberal thought when it is rational and well thought out. So far, you are not providing rational, factual, well thought out ideas.

Nonetheless, I’m sure that your mainstream is more mainstream than my mainstream.

And I know about Senator Santorum, who compares gays to wife-beaters, child abousers and sheep f*ckers. Now that’s pretty mainstream…

since you rightly took me to task about Dave Duke, I give you another mainstream Republican quote to make up for it:

“Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God’s Law and the disenfranchisement of White men.”

- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01

Now being a conservative does not make one a supporter of these fascistoid views any more than being a liberal makes on either a Democrat or a Byrd supporter.

I once again point out that it is easy to fetch an extremist from either side of the political spectrum, bei it a Barbara Streisand or a Don Davis and hold them up as paragons of liberal/conservative thinking.

“David Duke, the ex-KKK Republican Senator from Louisiana.”

Duke ran for Senator from Louisiana. In that race there were 2 Republicans running and one Democrat. The Republicans withdrew their major candidate rather than chance a split vote that could have given the election to Duke. In other words, they would rather have a Democrat take that seat than Duke! (Louisiana has a very different way of doing elections, so to understand this you have to understand the election process in that state.) Duke did win an election on a state level. President George H. W. Bush AND Ronald Reagan campaigned AGAINST him! He also ran for Governor of Louisiana. He got an official letter from the GOP telling him they not only disagreed with him but they couldn’t stand him or his views!
Contrast the Republican (or conservative) reaction to Duke to Senator Robert Byrd. He is a Democrat (liberal). He was also a past leader the Ku Klux Klan. He became a DEMOCRATIC Senator in 1959. He is still a Senator. When the Democrats controlled the Senate he was elected President Pro Tem.

So, tell me, who stands closer to the mainstream of the conservatives and liberals?
Duke, a KKK leader, was shunned, major party leaders worked to keep him out of office and he is now somewhere in obscurity with no power or office.
Byrd, a KKK leader, is a major leader in the Democratic Party and is held in high esteem by the Democrats.

You support the KKK ralphieboy? You are a liberal, are you not? Byrd is a liberal, so you must support the KKK. That logic is just as sound as the logic in your post!

If you support the view that Conservatism is the *only* form of rational thought, then you are prepared to make excuses for the “excesses” of folks like Ann Coulter, Rick Santorum or David Duke, the ex-KKK Republican Senator from Louisiana.

There are plenty of folks like that about, and they stand closer to the “mainstream” of conservative thought than any rational person would like.

I pay little attention to what celebrities have to say about politics until they start running for office.

Quoting Ann Coulter to show how mean-spritited people from the right can be is nothing more than a cheap shot. She’s a columnist, making a living by being as cynical and polemical as she can. It’s her job and she does it well! I love her and in my next life I will marry her, so you better watch what your’re saying

Barbra Streisand doesn’t even try to be cynical and polemical. She’s just echoing crap that sounds good but at the same time is so shallow that you don’t even need facts to prove her wrong. She is clearly abusing her position as a celebrity. The entertainment industry is full of people like her. Countless actors, singers, comedians etc. who couldn’t possibly have the time to be really informed about what’s going on in the room next to them, act like they know exactly what makes the world go around. That’s embarrassing and it insults the intelligence of those who try to stay informed!

Senator Santorum is pretty mainstream conservative. How about Ann “We should kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity” Coulter?

And one does not have to go as far as the KKK or Arayan nations to find some god-awful bigots in the conservative camp, just as one does not have to attend a Holywood hot-tub party to hear some incredibly airheaded liberal thinking.

But you can say the attitude of Mrs. Streisand is very much mainstream liberal, at least as far as i can tell from the distance.

No comment about the “looks the christians have fundamentalists too”-relativism. We had that discussion before and it led nowhere.

Loc