And now, from the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory wing of the Tea Party…

In case I had ever been considering moving back to Indiana…

Now, if you attend some tea party meetings in Indiana, a different kind of challenge is emerging. On the information tables, along with candidate brochures and handouts from right-wing blogs, is a stack of DVDs, one of them titled “Rothschild’s Choice: Barack Obama and the Hidden Cabal Behind the Plot to Murder America.”

As described in breathless narration over ominous, pounding, suspenseful music, the cabal is made up of Jewish financiers and billionaires, run today by Lord Jacob Rothschild, the 4th Baron. Along with Jewish-run secret societies and globalist organizations, their control of Barack Obama has turned him into a water boy to their causes.

Obama is a Zionist puppet, goes the argument, supported by Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Barney Frank — all Jews, all part of the banking system, all tools of the conspiracy. “David Axelrod,” says the narrator, “That’s right, he had a Jewish campaign manager.”

I can already hear the chorus starting up from the Tea Party crowd. This is just a fringe element, doesn’t represent the overall movement, blah blah blah.

Rather than getting into yet another argument about whether or not the Tea Party movement has a significant basis in racism, nativism, and xenophobia, I’m going to take a different route here. For decades, Republicans and conservatives have been tarring Democrats with every nutball and loon that shows up at anything that is even remotely related to the party. Democrats have been forced to answer for and disavow an endless stream of fringe groups and figures, down to the level of forum-posters on non-affiliated websites.

Now, faced with an escalating series of kooks, bigots, and crackpots showing up at their events and frequenting their forums, conservatives are falling back on the same “We’re not responsible for those guys” answers for which they have torched Democrats over and over again.

You can’t have it both ways, guys. Either drop the guilty-by-association tactics, or admit you’ve got some scary shit happening within your “party”.