The latest example of Tea Party violence making the news – Rand Paul’s county campaign coordinator stomping on the head of a pinned-down MoveOn activist – highlights just how completely outside the American norm these Tea Party candidates and their followers are. The actions of Paul’s goon squad also refocuses attention on a similar event in Alaska last week.

In Alaska’s Joe Miller, we have a candidate for Senate who not only refuses to open himself to press inquiry, he surrounds himself with an aggressive group of bullies who rough up a reporter who dares ask questions of the candidate.

As PFAW President Michael B. Keegan wrote in the Huffington Post, this is not acceptable behavior in a democratic society. It’s not even a close call.

History has proven time and again that democracies are fragile. The civil compact underlying a democratic society must be monitored and renewed constantly. Part of that contract is that candidates for public office don’t have private goons squads who use physical force against reporters or anyone else they perceive as a threat to their ambitions.

Another requirement is that when a candidate goes so far over the line against the norms of a democratic society, his supporters recognize the danger, put their country’s welfare first, and withdraw their support. Again, this is not even a close call.

So this is a moment of truth for the Republican Party, as it has to choose between the values of the Tea Party and those of the United States Constitution.

The GOP should not only loudly condemn this assault on democracy, it should stop funding Miller’s campaign and urge Alaskans to vote for someone else. Since Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican senator who Miller defeated in the primary, is already engaged in a write-in campaign to keep her seat, it’s not like the party doesn’t have an alternative, corporate-friendly candidate to easily turn to. Polls have shown her nearly even with Miller.

Continuing party support for a thug whose behavior undermines the foundations of our free society is a canary in a coal mine, another dangerous indication of the contempt for democracy held by a Republican Party under the sway of the Tea Party.

Should the voters of Alaska reward Miller and the Tea Party with a victory on November 2, America will have crossed a line: The tactics of Miller and his bully boys will no longer be considered quite so far beyond the norm, and we can expect to see more of the same.

And that should concern all patriotic Americans.