Washington Times columnist Charles Hurt has had enough:

There is growing consternation in Republican circles and among conservatives over why Republicans keep allowing the various Communist, leftist and otherwise anti-American TV networks to host GOP debates.

The ickiness of Diana Sawyer asking questions in her cloying voice is more than most can bear. The utter cluelessness of the questions these people think actual American voters care about is mystifying. The shameless and ham-handed pandering to conservatives by the networks is revolting.

Ordinarily the enthusiastic sexism and casual references to “Communist” television networks would be cause enough for concern, but Hurt directs this argument down a path that is straight-up terrifying. Breaking down Newt Gingrich's broadsides against CNN's John King at last night's debate in South Carolina, Hurt sketches out a mixed-metaphor-laced nightmare:

Now I realize that what we watched last night was not a simple beating and perhaps it was wrong of so many of us to enjoy it with such bloodlust. It was more a public evisceration. A man's entrails were picked out and drawn far out from inside him and left for jackals to chew on before his living eyes.

If John King of Communist News Network were not, in fact, a cardboard cutout of a blockheaded jock, it would have been much more gruesome. Because then human blood would have been spewing all over the stage and the fine people watching the debate live. Instead, it was just minced corrugated cardboard stuffing floating in the flood lights.

Yikes...

Granted, the brutally medieval imagery is somewhat befitting a candidate who has been the subject of epic ballads, but this is disturbing stuff.