So the debate over health care reform has all but stalled out for the summer. Rep. Henry Waxman tried to keep the "public option" component of the package together, but wound up getting sold down the river by a bunch of Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Dog Democrats who could give lessons to the GOP minority on how to thwart a presidential agenda. Obama's poll numbers took a pretty sizable hit in the last couple of weeks, at least according to Rasmussen, though there is a fairly compelling argument to be made that Rasmussen's numbers are only meaningful to Rasmussen. The president also wound up having a beer with a Harvard professor and a Cambridge cop to try to quell a story that has stepped all over the health care debate for the last week.

    On balance, therefore, it would be difficult to argue that this was anything other than a rough week for Democrats in general and the White House in particular. Politics being what it is, one would expect the GOP to do their level best to make some hay out of these stumbles and miscues, and for sure they have tried. Once again, however, the Republican Party gave America a clinic on how to look foolish, deranged, out of touch and downright amusing.

    For those in need of their daily recommended allowance of shrieking bat-poop insanity, look no further than the so-called "Birther" conspiracy currently roiling the ranks of the GOP. A holdover from the 2008 presidential campaign, the "Birther" controversy is centered around the far-Right argument that Obama was not born in America, has no birth certificate, is not an American citizen, and is not therefore a legitimate president. The actual birth certificate was produced ages ago, Hawaii proudly proclaimed itself the birthplace of the president, and the issue has been entirely settled in the minds of all but a few, who at their core simply cannot accept that a black man with an Arabic name sleeps in the White House.

    The rank absurdity of the Birthers' contentions hasn't kept a whole array of high-ranking Republicans from jumping into the fray to endorse the validity of this farce. "Indeed," reported Talking Points Memo on Wednesday, "prominent Congressional Republicans were openly entertaining this stuff. A bill to require birth certificates from presidential candidates has picked up 11 total co-sponsors; Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) declared that the Birthers 'have a point,' and that he doesn't discourage it. Even House GOP Vice Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington), a member of the leadership, was saying she wanted to see the documents."

    But here's the funny part. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, right-wing bombthrower Ann Coulter and GOP Chairman Michael Steele - three people who have repeatedly set the standard for Deranged Things Actually Said In Public - have been working overtime to kill the Birther debate because they think it's stupid. They think it's stupid. Memo to the Far Right: when you've lost the support of people like O'Reilly, Coulter and Steele, you have to step back and wonder just how far from the pack you've strayed.

    Elsewhere on the goofball spectrum, a couple of prominent right-wingers accused President Obama and the Democrats of being racists. Yes, they actually did. Fox News commentator Glenn Beck called Obama a racist for coming down on the side of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. during the recent flap over his arrest. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) blasted Senate Democrats for - get this - using Sonya Sotomayor's race to divide the American people. Democrats, according to Cornyn, have been "giving cover to groups and individuals to nurture racial grievances for political advantage."

    Yeah, let's move on. There are just no words.

    Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) went out on a limb the other day to argue that the GOP's political woes of late are largely the fault of the party's far-Right Southern core. Voinovich's accusation drew a stern rebuke from fellow Republican Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana), who said, "I'm on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values. There are a lot of us from the South who hold those values, which I think the party is supposed to be about. We strayed from them in the past few years, and that's why we performed so badly in the national elections." Not content to leave it at that, Vitter went on to label Voinovich a "wishy-washy" moderate.

    But here's the funny part. Senator Vitter's heartfelt defense of core GOP values left out the part about how he is a known, publicly confirmed consorter with prostitutes, and admitted in 2007 to committing a "serious sin," the nature of which, one must assume, had nothing to do with failing to keep holy the Sabbath. The last word on this one belongs to Louisiana Democratic Party spokesman Kevin Franck, who replied to inquiries by Talking Points Memo with the following email message: "Last time I checked, you don't find core Southern values in the places David Vitter has been found. If David Vitter can lead his party back to their conservative values, maybe Larry Craig can give them tips on bathroom etiquette and Mark Sanford can recommend a really good restaurant in Buenos Aires."

    Ouch.