It is obvious that since coming to Fox News Glenn Beck has sucked much of the hot air out of many radical-right commentators, like Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, who now in the Beck Era are mere shells of their former selves. This of course is understandable, in the course of his one hour broadcast Glenn Beck provides viewers with their daily dose of demagoguery that former right-wing commentators needed a whole day to dispense. 

Well, right-wing commentators are not sitting down accepting defeat (unlike many Congressional Democrats and their desire for a public option). They are stepping up their game and bringing out the extreme rhetoric to show to their fan base that in the world of right-wing pundetry they are still relevant. 

Ann Coulter, the former star of the radical-right's ideological camp, in an attempt to outdo Beck's "progressives were once called 'slave-owners'" like comments and sell more copies of her book Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America made a stunning declaration in a recent segment for The Joy Behar Show. "Every presidential assassination or attempted presidential assassination was committed by some kind of left-wing loon, communist, anarchist, communitarian, or they had no politics at all." She said delightfully. 

Behar, who is not a fan of social-conservatives (and I am sure the feeling is mutual), did not waste any time bouncing back, accusing Coulter of making illogical connections between liberals, murderers, and terrorists. 

Coulter's guilt by association argument is not a new, and has been used by social-conservatives over the past decades to assualt liberals and progress not based on their ideas but rather intangible associations. Possibly most famously articulated in Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Of which as Eric Alterman of The Nation notes that the entire book is based on questionable ties between today's liberals and "progressives" like Hitler. Alterman writies, "Some fascists were vegetarians; some liberals are vegetarians; ergo... Some fascists were gay; some liberals are gay... Fascists cared about educating children; Hillary Clinton cares about educating children. Aha! ... This is a book that argues that Woodrow Wilson 'was the twentieth century's first fascist dictator' and that it is 'impossible to deny that the New Deal was objectively fascistic.'"

While scholars continue to debate whether or not one can accruately define fascism and figures as Adolf Hitler as extreme-left or extreme-right, right-wing pundits have had no trouble with making these associations to contemporary progressism with little regard for historical accuracy. The truth of the matter is while historical figures like Hilter or Mao Zedong have described themselves as forward-leaning for their time their ties to contempory maintstream progressivism in this country exist only in the minds of right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck. 

It is a clever strategy. Right-wing punidts know that they cannot win an argument on ideas, such as cleaner energy, better schools, reproductive choice, health-care for all, equal-rights for all Americans; and as a result must rely on misinformation and deception to scare voters into thinking that the contempary progressive movement is a political effort to finish the work of the 20th century worst war criminals and dictators. Rather than debunking the tenants of contemporary progressism right-wing pundits have tried to smear the movement with falsehoods in an attempt to turn the word progressive effectively into a political bad-word. And they have largely been successful in this charge. However, despite this when we take a look at the issues more Americans are agreeing with more progressive views than before. 

Coulter, like Beck and other prominent right-wing mainstream pundits, is not likely to stop the campaign to label every liberal proposal as a Marxist-communist-socialist-fascist take over anytime soon--it has been too profitable--however, their arguments which until Glenn Beck arrived merely hinged on the absurd has dived right in, and as a result more Americans are becoming tired of the illogical hyperbole rather than solutions.