Q Toon: Controlled Outbursts

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today, I saw Mitt Romney tell Joe and Mika that unlike Rick Perry, he had to work with an opposition-led legislature and therefore knows how to reach across the aisle and get things done. That, he predicted, would be the style of a Romney presidency.

Should the Democratic leadership declare that their Number One Goal is to make sure that Romney is a one-term president, that could be a little difficult. Not as difficult as if he were facing opposition from the lockstep Republican legislators; Will Rogers' quip, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat," still holds true.

MoveOn.org has got nothing on the [Insert State Name Here] Club for Growth. Code Pink is peanuts next to the Tea Party.

Radical conservatives made their 2010 gains after a summer of disrupting the town meetings of Democratic Representatives and Senators in a coordinated campaign to provide the media with ample dramatic footage of supposedly grass-roots opposition to Health Care Reform and all things Democrat. Republican Congressman Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" at President Obama during a State of the Union address.

And while Republicans in Congress have shielded themselves from heckling by charging constituents money to attend their town hall meetings, or conducting town hall meetings over the phone (where they can cut off any unruly outburst, and which it would be illegal to record), Republican presidential candidates are finding that the enthusiastic behavior their party's activists have encouraged is not limited to shouting down the opposition.

Texas leads the nation in death row executions. Wild applause! Should medical care be withheld from some 30-year-old without insurance? Heck yeah! Is that a gay soldier risking his life in Iraq in service to his country? Boo!

What is a political party to do?