The Republicans are taking it to a whole new level.  It's one thing for a politician or blow-hard Fox News pundit to name-call, but when the party unites to officially rebrand its adversary, that's an entirely different thing:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

…Exercising a rarely used party rule that allows any 16 RNC members from 16 different states to demand a special meeting, conservatives in the party forced Steele’s hand, and now the special meeting will be tacked onto the end of a previously scheduled meeting of state party chairmen that will convene next week at National Harbor outside Washington.

Democrats are rejoicing.  This is exactly the kind of over-the-top rhetoric which has propelled the Republican Party into disrepute and oblivion.

I mean, think about it.  How wise is it to tell the majority of the American electorate that they voted in "socialists"?

It also cements the reputation of the Republican being nothing more than anti's.  No solutions.  No new ideas.  Just always being negative.

The leader of the "Democrat Socialist" rebranding effort, Indiana RNC member James Bopp, Jr., sent an memo around further explaining its purpose. Here's a pertinent passage:

The threat to our country from the Obama administration cannot be underestimated. They are proceeding pell mell to nationalize major industries, to exponentially increase the size, power and intrusiveness of the federal government, to undermine free enterprise and free markets, to raise taxes to a confiscatory level, to strap future generations with enormous unsustainable debt, to debase our currency, to destroy traditional values and embrace a culture of death, and to weaken our national defense and retreat from the war on terror. Unless stopped, we will not recognize our country in a few short years.

See, the problem with this over-the-top rhetoric — "we will not recognize our country in a few short years" — is that when life in America doesn't appear to most as bleak "in a few short years", the Republicans look like jackasses.