If you’ve ever wondered if the GOP hasn’t gone completely off the rails (excluding the obvious), wonder no more.

Oh, no. Oh, yes!

To wit: I recently received a fundraising snail-mail from “The honorable Mike Pence”. And you read right, the letterhead title includes that glaring typo.

Too funny. Loving it already!

But the funniest parts, if it weren’t so sad, the first of which tells us they really are extremists, well, paragraph four states: “Pelosi’s socialists have taken full-blown control of the Democrat Party”.

Did you catch that? (No, not the “socialist” part, they always call Dems that.) The “Democrat” Party bit…instead of “Democratic” Party.

Yep, even Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, has taken to using “Democrat” incorrectly, making it pejorative (as if it needs help among my fellow-Southern whites for whom politics has always been largely defined by religion and race, hence, disagreement too-oft equals faithless backstabber).

Of course, it was really the context in which Haley used it that turned the mirror on her own mug. After the President took-out Iranian General Soleimani in a covert missile strike, Republicans went into extremist-thinking overdrive. Haley said, “Only Democrat leaders and Democrat candidates are defending Soleimani.” (As if.) And down the deep, dark rabbit hole they went.

Her comments weren’t nearly as offensive as Georgia GOP Representative Doug Collins: “Democrats are supporting and mourning the death of Soleimani more than the death of a Gold Star parent’s kid”. (Ouch!) Even though we all know who attacked Gold Star parents at Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome- like rallies, and on live TV over and over again, when they were mourning their son killed in battle: President Trump.

But I digress.

I did an unscientific study once about such mangled “Democrat” usage and what I came up with is that it seems to reveal the extremist-thinking of the user. One would think Vice President Mike Pence and former Governor Nikki Haley, if not noxious Congressman Doug Collins, know better.

Have you ever wondered where that came from though, using “Democrat” as pejorative adjective like that?

As many of my friends, family and other followers, Facebook, newspapers and otherwise, know, a lot of things are delivered to me in my dreams (that whole Asperger’s/ Turing bipolar-blessed thing). Properly lassoed, trained and controlled, much cognitive affliction can be ordered to one’s benefit. Not so long ago I fell into an informative sleep concentrating on: Hmm, where did that come from, using “Democrat”

like that, it’s somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I know who started the craze but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

And voila! I saw it in a dream. I used to work on construction sites, first as a laborer, then as an electrician’s helper; the carpenters and electricians listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I also started listening to him, on my own, later in life to monitor his madness. So, from whence I got it I cannot be sure, but, in my dream, I heard it; Rush said, his typical bellicose bluster in full flower: “The Democratic Party?! There’s nothing democratic about them, they can call themselves ‘democrats’ but they are not respectfully democratic, I call them the ‘Democrat’ Party!”

Now, whether I actually get this right or not, and I probably do, is beside the point, it certainly sounds like something he (or 90s-era extremist Newt Gingrich) would come up with. And it has caught on and spread like wildfire. Thanks to Faux News and the various sheeple of today’s neo-GOP (no offense intended, but really, Donald Trump?), nary a Republican pol or pundit says “Democratic Party” or “Democratic candidate” anymore (pay attention, you’ll see).

But, back to that wild and wacky fundraising letter: next up, we have VP Pence cheerleading about Trump putting “more than 100 pro-Constitution conservative judges” on our federal courts.

I’m like: Really, “pro-Constitution” and “conservative” in the same breath?

Is that why conservatives lose literally every challenge they lodge against individual liberty and justice for all? The record is stunning; it starts with universal suffrage (women voting), then segregation and civil rights, abortion rights, marriage equality; even the socio-economic stuff: the income tax, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps and welfare, Obamacare.

Conservatives haven’t missed a beat; they’ve challenged every bit of it.

And down in flames they went.

Finally, said fundraising appeal closes asking for money.

No surprise there, of course, but it’s the amounts of money. The first box is for a whopping ONE-THOUSAND DOLLARS! The next one is 500, then 250, 100, 50, or “even just 35 dollars”, wow.

Extreme, indeed!

This is rural Georgia. Richie Rich ain’t home.

Wrong trailer.

Bernie Evans is a local writer whose opinions have appeared in local publications, TIME and The Nation.