Frat-boys or Fascists?

From Salon:

Joan Walsh, editor at large for Salon.com, penned this missive about a disruptive "reporter" at the President's Rose Garden address. The occasion was an executive order halting deportation proceedings against the children of undocumented immigrants. The "frat-boy" pretend reporter and real life provocateur bleated during the address “Why do you favor foreigners over American workers?” then immediately played the victim. Now, obviously this is disgusting, disrespectful, and part of a definite pattern of right-wing disruption, coming from a supposed "reporter" doubly so. But, clueless Joan does the cause of civilization a disservice by trying to shoe-horn this behavior into the already too narrow conventional wisdom of acceptable American political discourse.
She sort of gets it that we have witnessed a real change in the American right:

"Conservatism has always been associated with deference to authority, but lately it’s only for authority they respect. The Romney campaign has been glorying in this new form of frat-boy conservatism, first sending campaign supporters to heckle Obama adviser David Axelrod during a press conference, and yesterday sending its bus to circle and disrupt an Obama event, honking its horn. It reminds me of the famous “Brooks Brothers riots” in Miami during December 2000, when supporters of George W. Bush threatened to physically prevent county officials from recounting votes in that heavily Democratic stronghold. Of course, it also harks back to Romney himself in prep school, tackling a gay classmate and cutting off his long blond hair while he cried and asked for help."
The problem is that Joan does "our" side no favors by pointing this episode out and placing it alongside the other outrages perpetrated by the right wing. "Our" side already is thoroughly disgusted with the childish, bullying antics repeated daily by supposedly independent operators. Independents, those people characterized by George Lakoff as "morally complex" and able to interpret both points of view, absorb this kind of analysis inadvertantly as reinforcing the "strict father" mentality. And the right wing nut jobs simply cheer for their side against the hated enemy.

The problem is the legitimization of fascist tactics into the frame of "conservatism."