Over at Sullivan’s place there’s this debate going on about Hillary - how the right is specifically using the spectre of Hillary to raise money, to galvanize supporters. Sullivan has suggested repeatedly that were the Democrats to nominate Hillary it would be a bad move for a lot of reasons -but primarily because of her divisiveness, because the right-wingers hate her now, and what happens “when this country is attacked again and Clinton needs the trust and support of those who didn’t vote for her? What will America do then?”

All very true. But, notes a reader:

Do you really think that any other non-Hillary candidate will somehow be free of attack from the Limbaughs, JPods, and Hannitys of the world? They already call Obama “Osama” and have suggested that he was educated in a madrassah. Any Democrat that is elected will be subject to polarizing fire from the right, especially if the right loses badly in 2008. It doesn’t matter if it is Hillary or anyone else, it will be 1998 all over again. Except this time, with a “stab in the back” betrayal of all that is good and right and favored by Jesus to spice it all up.

And that’s absolutely right. Democrats, and the country as a whole, need to realize that whomever the Democratic candidate is, the far right will hate him or her; it is going to 1998 all over again whomever it is. I don’t see that as a reason to vote for Hillary - because there are a lot of other reasons to oppose her - but let’s not pretend that some other candidate is going to get anything resembling a grace period. And you could say that the left would treat the right’s candidate in the same fashion - and that might be correct as well.

The toxic genie is out of the bottle, as Sullivan’s reader notes - but let’s not pretend we don’t know who popped the cork in the first place:

But for the moment and for the foreseeable future, the genie is out. For this I blame the Republican Party, and only the Republican Party.

I think the only way that the polarizing toxicity gets drained away from national politics is if the source of that toxicity - the culture warrior wing of the GOP - is decimated, and a new GOP can grow free of its power.