Latest dispatch from the "dissent is patriotic" is dead front: Howard Dean has accused those who don't share his political views of being "authoritarian people who fundamentally don't believe in democracy."

Poor Howard, who declared the times to be very "frightening and disconcerting," made his astounding accusation on today's Up With Steve Kornacki while attempting to explain the Republican sweep on the statehouse level.

Former Md. Governor Bob Ehrlich (R) pushed back against Howard Dean and Chris Matthews on Wednesday night's Hardball when the topic of voter ID laws came up and the liberal duo pushed the tired meme that such laws were Republican plots to disenfranchise poor and minority voters who tend to be Democrats. 

Ehrlich pushed back that such laws were common sense to establish a voter's identity and thus protect every voter's vote. The former Republican congressman also noted that MSNBC studios require a valid government-issued photo ID to visit.

On Friday's Hardball, Chris Matthews and Howard Dean slammed the supposedly "lunatic" Republican Party for opposing President Obama's $3.7 billion request to deal with the ongoing crisis at the U.S-Mexico border. Dean likened the political stalemate over this issue and in general in Washington to McCarthyism in the 1950s: "It reminds me of the 'who lost China' debate...where one side is frothing at the mouth and finding communists under every bed; and the other side – including some reasonable Republicans...actually trying to run the country."

Matthews endorsed the former Vermont governor's take, and targeted fiscal conservatives/the Tea Party as somehow akin to Mao's Red Guards: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

In a desperate effort to tout the collapse of the Republican Party, guest host of The Last Word, Ari Melber was joined by Howard Dean and David Frum on Monday evening to discuss the lack of serious ideas coming from the right. According to the MSNBC liberals, the fearful Tea Party wants to go back to a pre-Civil War America.

The guests swapped theories on the relationship between the GOP and the Tea Party. Howard Dean used the textbook MSNBC talking point that the Tea Party is just frustrated that the people leading the country “don’t look like them anymore.”

Things got testy between Joe Scarborough and Howard Dean on today's Morning Joe over the issue of the Dem party moving left.  In a particularly unkind cut, Scarborough accused Dean of spouting "Carl Bernstein nonsense," while Dean tried to shut Scarborough down, bleating "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."  Adding spice to the mix, Mika Brzezinski made clear her great regard for lefty Senator Elizabeth Warren, saying she'd make a "formidable" presidential candidate. 

The fracas was detonated by a discussion of a Wall Street Journal op-ed by a centrist Dem group called "The Third Way," which argued that following proposals from Warren and far-left, newly-elected NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, would be electorally "disastrous" for Dems.  That in turn engendered a New York Times article about infighting among Dems, reporting among other things that Warren is using "hardball" tactics to intimidate banks supporting The Third Way. View the video after the jump.