In another sign that Republicans have gone off the deep end, Mitt Romney makes an absurd homage to the American Revolution by suggesting that the Democrats are the monarchists and the Republicans are the revolutionaries.

It's difficult being a Republican these days. What do you do when you have no ideas left, when you've suffered catastrophic defeats in the last two elections, and when you have to resort to tea bagging to get attention? You engage in hyperbole, of course. The Republicans have started a new branding effort, called the National Council for a New America, designed to resuscitate the party. Enter Mitt "the Shit" Romney, who is touring with other major Republicans figures as part of the campaign. In comments to a largely Republican crowd, Romney made an awkward observation:

We are the party of the revolutionaries, they [Democrats] are the party of the monarchists.

Not that he cares, but let me just remind Mitt that when it comes to systems of government, the left in America is solidly republican, in the sense that we believe in republics. It's your right-wing nutcases threatening secession and all kinds of other kooky ideas that would destroy the republic. Since I do, in fact, care very much about this subject, let me also remind Mitt that radical liberals overthrew Louis XVI in France, that liberals overthrew the Tsar in Russia, and that the left, in general, has been a staunch support of republican and democratic values. In fact, to the extent that we can even speak about "republican and democratic values," it's because of the left, which introduced them in the first place.

Here's some more history for you Mitt, courtesy of my book The Liberal Ethos:

The label of 'democrat' was applied pejoratively to signify mob rule just around two centuries ago. The people who were doing the chastising were usually conservatives, autocrats, and monarchists. In the United States, for example, the political battles between the Federalists and the Republicans during the 1790s touched on precisely that label. Federalists, conservatives who supported a strong central government, looked at the conflicts of the French Revolution and associated those events with democratic ochlocracy. Republicans, leftists who opposed dictatorial central governments, were much more friendly to the goals and achievements of the Revolution, a friendliness that caused the Federalists to start calling them ‘Democratic-Republicans,’ a moniker that the Republicans actually accepted and began using themselves. After the House of Representatives gave the 1824 election to John Quincy Adams, however, one of the wings of the Democratic-Republicans, led by Andrew Jackson, went on to become the Democratic Party, which sealed the fate of the 'democratic' label in the United States, for the better, of course. The brazen label was a deliberate attempt to root the Democrats as the ‘party of the people,’ in opposition to the corrupt aristocrats that Jackson accused of having stolen the election in 1824.

Good luck in 2012 Mitt....go get those monarchists.