JONATHAN TURLEY: A Dangerous Woman: Democrats Adopt Soviet Rhetoric to Condemn Stevens as Mentally Ill.

After she declared that she would split her ticket and vote for Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed, Democrats across the country declared her mentally ill. Some used the attack literally, feigning deep concern over her safety — the way that you describe a friend found raving on the subway about being probed by aliens.

Lawyer George Conway encouraged her to check into a mental facility immediately. He is, after all, a Juris Doctor.

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D., Md.) explained to CNN in the tone of an intervention that “I have been worried about her all last week. She’s a human being.”

Former Republican Bill Kristol was more direct that Stevens “seems to have had some kind of breakdown or something.”

Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan said that Stevens is “clearly a disturbed, deranged, dishonest woman.”
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It is a tactic made infamous by the Soviets, who invented conditions such as “sluggish schizophrenia” to lock up dissidents in mental hospitals. Nikita Khrushchev explained that mental illness was the only plausible explanation for anyone who opposed communism.

Locking up dissidents and shooting them full of sedatives was Khrushchev’s “kinder, gentler” alternative to Stalin just having them shot.