Conservative talk radio has been saying essentially the exact same things for months. You talk about this like Slate is continuing to focus on the crazy uncle that the GOP locked up in the basement long ago, but this is hardly an "impuslive moment"; this is the governing mind-set of a large chunk of the party - if not its mainstream, then at least its largest and most politically-active coherent sub-group.

Slate may be aiming at a political effect in putting this article out, but if so then it is "approximately right" on the facts - the most public and recognizable voices of the Republican Party are guiding it out of the realm of respectability and into that of hysteria and histrionics. The fact that Joe Wilson has simultaneously profited from and been marginalized by his outburst is indeed an interesting story, and one that illustrates how wide a potential chasm there is within his party.