From the WTF department

I'd like to offer a hearty "attaboy" to the members of the lunatic fringe who took to the streets on September 12.

By the way, for those of you interested in cementing the GOP as a permanent, irrelevant minority, dressing your kids up like this is a great start.

Andrew Sullivan has his take here. I agree with 90% of it.

I had similar thoughts in April during the advent of the tea party protests.

I don't disagree with the idea that the current administration spends too much and is unconcerned with the deficit. Unless Sarah Palin inexplicably wins the Republican nomination, I will not be voting to re-elect Barack Obama in 2012.

But how quickly we forget about the incompetent, big-government "compassionate conservatism" nonsense peddled by Bush & Co. for eight years that is largely responsible for the Obama administration sweeping into power in the first place. This was an administration that immediately squandered a $200 billion budget surplus, doubled the national debt in just eight years and at virtually every corner, attempted to expand the size and scope of the federal government (Medicare Part D, the TARP bailout, every single possible issue concerning civil liberties, etc.). Outside of his conduct of the war in Afghanistan, I cannot think of one single measure that should indicate to anyone -- Republican, Democrat or independent -- that George W. Bush was an effective president. Sorry.

Here's why that's relevant. Bush left office with an approval rating right at 30 percent. However, his favorables among self-identified Republicans remained in the 70s. I'd bet the farm that the vast, vast majority of those marching would be more than happy to whoop and holler and tell you how much they miss the free-spending Dubya. As Sullivan noted, "limited government" appears to be quite an elastic idea.

Look. I don't care for Obama, either. I have written ad nauseum about why his "changenhope" banter was nothing more than a dog and pony show, and how he has been intellectually lazy (at best) at almost every turn in addressing critics of his policies.

However, I can't take these protesters seriously. These marches are not borne out of principle or logic, but rather out of the same sort of hyperpartisanship that has driven intellectual discourse in this country to the brink of extinction.