As our shepherd Robert once put it so eloquently, "I smell Conservative fear." Paid spokesmen for the hard Right have always tried to insult those who disagree with them, to call into question their common sense, piety, morality, patriotism, their courage, even their basic humanity. Part of this is because they are too lazy or too limited to come up with arguments against the ideas they oppose, and part of it is because these personal attacks they engage in are so appealing to their followers. They profit by changing the subject to the irrelevant.

Now they are learning that there are consequences to hate. This goes beyond the relative merits of which philosophy or ideology is "correct" (whatever that means). They are losing one of the most dependable weapons in their armory, the attack on character. And now, as we see in the case of Ms Ingraham, they are losing one of the defining justifications for their ideology--the profit.

As more and more people become tolerant of unusual or marginal behavior or points of view, they become less likely to be deterred by being pointed out as allegedly perverse or deviant. For example, they can't accuse their enemies of
being homosexual any more, because not only do homosexuals welcome the accusation, but because the majority of heterosexuals simply don't care whether someone is gay or not. Non-conventional sexuality is no longer fair game, any more than race is. And there are no more Communists any more either. The Right is running out of things to hate.

They know they are losing the battle of the marketplace of ideas, so they are scared, and they are becoming increasingly desperate, and vicious. They are actively seeking new ways and minorities to hate and it will get much worse before it gets better.