Which Party is Controlled by Extremists?

Sarah Palin called for the impeachment of Barack Obama this week. Steve Kraske of the Kansas City Star reacts to Palin in today's The Buzz:

Palin cited the influx of young illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as that “last straw.” The thinking in some quarters is that talk like this could wind up hurting Republicans in a year that shapes up as a good one for them. Why? It suggests that the GOP is run by extremists.

Liberals in the media are always suggesting that the GOP is run by extremists. However, they never suggest that the Democratic Party is run by extremists. Consider that about 80 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) helped then-Rep. Bernie Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist," and others set up CPC during the early 1990s. DSA even hosted CPC's webpage until the late Balint Vazsonyi exposed that fact during the late 1990s. DSA and CPC continue to work together today, as demonstrated by this question and answer on DSA's website:

Q: Aren’t you a party that’s in competition with the Democratic Party for votes and support?
 No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
 The process and structure of American elections seriously hurts third party efforts. Winner-take-all elections instead of proportional representation, rigorous party qualification requirements that vary from state to state, a presidential instead of a parliamentary system, and the two-party monopoly on political power have doomed third party efforts. We hope that at some point in the future, in coalition with our allies, an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats.

Note that DSA is an arm of the Socialist International, which, according to Michael Harrington, who chaired DSA until his death in 1989, claims “direct descent from Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association.”

Given this, which major political party is actually run by extremists?

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article693288.html#storylink=cpy