They are beating the “extremist” talking point to a bloody pulp.

(The Hill) — Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) slammed the conservative wing of the Republican Party as “a small group of absolutists” and “extremists” who are ignoring history “if they ever knew it.”

“You know, the Chinese are looking at us right now and they are just gleeful and incredulous at the way in which one of their great competitors is imploding in itself, and it’s happening because a small group of absolutists, of extremists, who don’t understand the implications even of what they’re doing, are prepared to hold the nation’s entire economy hostage,” Kerry said Friday on MSNBC.

“I mean they’re acting as if they think they’re the only ones that understand that America has a debt problem,” Kerry continued.

Kerry said conservative House Republicans were coming into debt-ceiling negotiations with a large amount of “absolutism.”