NUANCE: Sen. Whitehouse: foes of health care bill are birthers, right-wing militias, aryan groups. He’d better worry, then, because they’ve got him outnumbered: “For the first time in our polling, more Americans said they’d rather stick with the status quo on health care than pass the Democrats’ bill.”

UPDATE: Latest from Rasmussen: 41% favor, 55% oppose. Who knew the militia movement had become so powerful?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Rob Crawford writes:

One of the things that bugs the living shit out of me about this type of rhetoric is that it is, on the margin, a self-fulfilling prophecy. People with good-faith objections find themselves lumped in with nut jobs, cranks, and thugs, and after a few decades, the “as well hung for a lion as a lamb” attitude. If objecting to government running your healthcare, controlling access to your medical records, confiscating another 30%+ of your labor and effectively drafting the medical industry means you’re an Aryan, right-wing militia, “birther” type, well, maybe you should give those groups another look…

I’m not going to claim the Republicans are innocent of this type of rhetoric, but, well, at least when they pointed out that the primary organizer of “anti-war” marches was the Communist group ANSWER, they had evidence to back them up.

Well, when Sen. Whitehouse gets tarred and feathered by a gang of gay Firedoglake commenters, I promise not to laugh. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’ll laugh.