The rank paranoia and sheer foolishness of today’s Republican Party is a constant source of surprise, even when it shouldn’t be. Nothing, it appears, is safe from the far-fetched, fearful, freaky, fanciful mind of the right wing GOPers.

Case in point: in today’s Wall Street Journal — which boasts distinguished news coverage and a bevy of the most noxious, wacko columnists, the always-wrong Karl Rove among them — there is a column about David Letterman’s upcoming retirement on CBS and his anointed successor, Steven Colbert. This would seem to be a pretty easy-going piece, you would think, but in fact as you read through it, it becomes an inflamed diatribe against a television network, Steven Colbert and liberal Democrats, who will be the only people who will watch the show. Really. I couldn’t make this up.

The columnist is Raymond Siller, identified a a former writer for Johnny Carson and now a political consultant (do you suppose he consults mostly with the Tea Baggers?). He writes that the selection of Colbert — whose character on Comedy Central is a conservative Republican blowhard — is likely to alienate conservatives (i.e., Republicans) when Colbert hits CBS. Why, you ask? Siller seems to believe that while Colbert is abandoning his character when he moves to CBS, he will appeal largely to liberal Democrats because … well, because I don’t know why. Siller never gets around to telling us why. Only that — and I’m quoting to show I didn’t make this up — “By picking Mr. Colbert, CBS seems to be signaling that its target demo is Democrats of a decidedly liberal stripe.”

What utter, witless tripe. The WSJ further descends to the bottom of the columnist pit with such bizarre imaginings. Could it not be that Steven Colbert’s appeal stretches across the political spectrum because he’s funny? Where are the demographics that tell us how many liberal Democrats watch Colbert compared to how many right-wing Republicans? Maybe it’s a lot. I never seen any numbers, however, and I’ll bet neither has Siller. It’s all conjecture from the extremely irrational right wing point of view, to which I can only add that is there any other point of view those people hold?

Colbert is a wealthy, middle-aged white guy. Therefore he fits into the perfect Republican right-wing demographic. The only difference is that from all I’ve heard, Colbert cares about people who are less well off and who don’t supply outrageous sums of money to support their anti-poor, anti-immigration, anti-women, anti-minority policies. But then — I haven’t seen the poll numbers on that. So we’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.