Democrats reach out to Tea Party with hyperbole and insults

Guy Benson:

Yesterday, we posted an item about a Politico column arguing that Tea Partiers are "full blown terrorists."  Today, Politico mixes things up a bit by publishing an Op/Ed advancing the premise that members of the Tea Party are just like the Taliban.  Diversity:

We now have a group of U.S. politicians seeking political purity, who seem to have much in common with the Taliban. They are tea party members; and because of blind adherence to smaller government, they seem intent on risking destroying what American political leaders have constructed in more than two centuries of hard, often painful work. Like the Taliban, they see compromise as an unacceptable alternative.

The author, a former Democratic Congressman and DCCC Chairman named Martin Frost, proceeds to lay out his take on the current debt impasse, and offers some potential paths to resolution.  He concludes by accusing the Tea Party of exploding American governance:

Granted, all this is hard. But there is no need to blow up centuries old religious statues — or two centuries of American government.

While I understand the best response to a comparison this inapt is to shrug or laugh it off, I can't quite shake the conviction of how deeply offensive it is.  The Taliban is a ghoulish cult built on harsh repression and the celebration of death.  They harbored and aided Al Qaeda for years.  They maim,abuse, torture, and kill in the name of Islam.  If you can stomach it, watch these appalling videosillustrating their horrifying barbarity.  Major content warning.  To compare these unconscionable butchers to the Tea Party -- a group of American citizens who seek to rein in the size and scope of government through peaceful, democratic means -- is totally outrageous.  Martin Frost, William Yeomans, and the whole lot of Lefties who enthusiastically participate in this slander should be ashamed of themselves -- or at least humiliated by their intellectual bankruptcy.

...

Perhaps it is just a failure of imagination, but I think the problem is also that Democrats are not used to being challenged on issues of government spending in such a way as to actually require some of it. The insults must make the Democrats feel good, because they have to know they are not persuasive to others. Calling people names is not going to make them want to let Democrats spend more of their money.

BTW, Guy Benson is not related to me as far as I know.