In a normal political world, congressman Allen West (R-FL) would be considered a crazy person. West is one of the most extreme of the Tea Party favorites, making one absurd claim after another to their great delight, his latest being the charge that 80 members of the Democratic party were also members of the Communist party.

But so crazy has the Republican party become that they are turning on West for even daring to suggest that a few popular elements of the Affordable Care Act, such as its guaranteeing coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, the ability of children to remain on a parent’s plan until age 26, and provisions that close the so-called ‘doughnut hole’ in Medicare, be reinstated if the Supreme Court throws the whole thing out.

Meanwhile former Republican senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) is a mean, sharp-tongued, pseudo-intellectual bully whose disgraceful performance during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas forever sealed him in my mind as a despicable man. He was appointed by president Obama to be co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission and has no qualms about advocating actions that would hurt the poor and lay the groundwork for the undermining of the Social Security program

You would think that he and the Tea Party would be great friends. But even Simpson seems to think that the current Republican party has gone too far in embracing the Tea Party agenda.

When someone like Simpson says that the party is nuts for interfering with women’s abortion rights, opposing rights for same sex couples, and having unswerving devotion to tax cuts, you have a sense of how crazy the party has become.