Republican crowds sure have been entertaining lately. They’ve cheered letting uninsured people die, torturing prisoners, and executing possibly innocent folks. They’ve even booed a gay soldier serving in Iraq! A lot of commentators were surprised by all of this. I’m not - they’re conservatives, this is what they do.

What I am surprised by, though, is the eventual defense of these barbaric acts. Like when a MoveOn.org supporter was stomped on by a Tea Partier with a Don’t-Tread-On-Me button, and the right didn’t do the one morally respectable thing they could have by condemning it.

So yes, when Michele Obama was booed at a NASCAR event, I totally could have seen that one coming. But when Rush Limbaugh says she deserved it, because of her “uppityness”? Hoo boy.

Here’s what’s going to happen, if it hasn’t already. Eliminationist rhetoric, which has long dominated right-wing politics, is going to graduate to full on violence. We saw this with the health-care debate, when Democrats were first told to expect Second Amendment remedies, and bullet-box instead of ballot-box solutions. Which eventually evolved into prominent supporters of Health Care reform (such as poor Gabrielle Giffords) receiving hate mail, having their windows broken, or other acts of brutal vandalism.

We’ll become so accustomed to this political violence, like the firebombing of a Texas Planned Parenthood center which barely registered on the news, that our shock and outrage will diminish more and more. And the insane zealots behind these attacks will become emboldened, more and more.

Don’t believe me? Look at the complete nonchalance that the country displays when peaceful protestors are beat, maced, injured and brutalized. It’s going to get much, much worse before it gets better.