Who: Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
What: Frank said on C-SPAN’s Newsmakers Sunday: “I believe that the results of the election of 2010 were to put people in charge of the House of Representatives who are the most extreme, rigidly ideological group to control one of the major political parties since the Democrats in the South before the Civil War.”
Why it’s dim: The pro-slavery Democrats to whom Frank refers seceded from the Union and launched the bloodiest conflict in American history. Any comparison to people who want to cut spending is just historically ignorant.
Cure: Less hyperbole.
