Republicans are up in arms over the insinuation that their historical reenactments of acts of violent vandalism are somehow extremist. So they are comparing themselves—favorably!—to the guy in Fight Club who blows up banks.

Today's meme on the right is that Obama's storm troopers are deliberately painting law-abiding, peaceful tax protesters as dangerous right-wing terrorists. This fantasy is based on the confluence of two events: The scheduled "tea party" events wherein white rich people can vent their rage at having to concede power to a nonwhite rich people, and the release this week of a Department of Homeland Security bulletin warning local authorities to be on the look-out for right-wing nutjobs. When Michelle Malkin hears "violent right-wing extremism," her ears naturally start burning. She thinks DHS was talking about her, and she's outraged.

OK, so if the Tea Baggers aren't violent extremists seeking the overthrow of the federal government, what are they, then? Over to you, Matt Mackowiak, Republican operative and former press secretary to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, writing in the Austin-American Statesman:

The coming revolution is akin to "Fight Club," the 1999 film that follows the struggles of day to day life for a regular guy who starts an underground fight club as radical and not terribly productive psychotherapy.

As Brad Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, says in the movie, "Fight Club was the beginning, now it's moved out of the basement, it's called Project Mayhem."

Tyler Durden, you may remember, was the imaginary friend a boring guy in a suit created during his descent into psychosis. And Project Mayhem, you will recall, was a plot to destroy the nation's financial system by blowing up credit card companies. Which is a fair approximation of what the Republican Party accomplished during its eight years in the White House.

So get it straight, Obamatards: Tea Baggers are not violent madmen. They just aspire to be like characters in movies who murder people and plant truck bombs in buildings in a coordinated effort to overthrow the existing power structure, with which they disagree.

There are some other ways the Republican Party is like Fight Club:

  • They are both comically and deeply homoerotic.
  • They are both always fighting among themselves for no reason.
  • They are both fucking insane.
  • They both have shitty endings.

[Via Matthew Yglasias.]