Yesterday, Steve Benen had this sarcastic sentence in a post he wrote about House Minority Whip Eric Cantor following the extremists and lunatics who seem to dictate the Republican Party’s public position on every single issue these days in condemning Cordoba House, the Islamic community center that a moderate Islamic cleric wants to build in New York:

Cantor offered the kind of thoughtful, well-reasoned response we’ve come to expect from the GOP leader.

That thoughtful, well-reasoned response consisted of stuff like this:

Everybody knows America’s built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on.

Isn’t it a travesty of the English language to call this joker a leader? All he does is obediently follow every extreme position taken by the extremist faction of the Republican base.

And he is, of course, hardly alone in this. The exact same description fits House Minority Leader John Boehner, for example, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And starry-eyed presidential hopefuls like Tim Pawlenty.

We should just stop calling these clowns leaders, when what they are so clearly is followers.