As per my previous blog about current White House Communications Director Anita Dunn citing mass murderer Mao Tse Tsung as one of her two favorite philosophers, here are the current party-in-power responses to the Beck condemnation of her remark:

"The Mao quote* is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me," Dunn told CNN.

Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group, points out that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, also a Fox News contributor, quoted* Mao in a 1995 Roll Call profile.

"War is politics with blood; politics is war without blood," Gingrich said, citing Mao.

Karl Rove, another Fox News contributor, wrote in a December 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed that President Bush "encouraged me to read* a Mao biography."

[Thanks to Mark Fee]
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*Quoting someone doesn't necessarily mean that you admire that person. You may just be agreeing with an observation that person made. Reading about someone certainly doesn't make you an admirer of that person either; many non-Socialists have read biographies of both Hitler and Stalin. Dunn didn't just quote Mao—she said that Mao is one of her two favorite philosophers.

Having said all that, from my viewpoint the RepubliCONS and the DemocRATS are just Socialist Party A and Socialist Party B anyway.