Max Boot is right

As Max writes:

“The Daily Show’s” Jordan Klepper did a horrifying and hilarious series of interviews with the Trump groupies who lined up on Oct. 9, amid Confederate flags and pictures of their hero riding a velociraptor and firing a machine gun, to hear former president Donald Trump speak in Iowa.

A woman in the MAGA hat and U.S. flag overalls denied that Trump supporters are a “cult” while saying, “I feel like whatever he spews out of his mouth, I just love it.” A guy denounced Democrats for “trying to divide [us]” while wearing a T-shirt showing Trump giving the middle finger to President Biden and Vice President Harris. An old-timer in a QAnon shirt insisted that Trump is still president and still in control of the military but denied that he should be blamed for what happened in Afghanistan.

This is appalling and insane. But there has always been a lunatic fringe in U.S. politics. In the 1950s and ’60s, the John Birch Society believed that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist agent and that the fluoridation of water was a communist conspiracy.

It’s true that, thanks to Facebook and Fox “News” Channel, nutty views spread faster and further than in the days when conspiracy theorists had to rely on mailing mimeographed manifestos. But the biggest difference between now and then isn’t the Republican grass roots. It’s the Republican leadership, or lack thereof. In the past, Republican leaders stood up to the zealots in their midst. Today, they stoke the flames of extremism — and wonder why they keep getting burned.