The problem is the application of ideas in the interest of contemporary politics. Ideas that have some validity in a particular context are overextended to situations where they don't really apply because it suits some people's political desires. "The paranoid style" was an idea that came to be used more as a weapon than as a scholarly analytical too.
Forty-five years ago, you could have had a passionate debate with Hofstadter. Now he's long since been a part of history himself, and seeing him in context is more appropriate than abusing someone who died forty years ago. There are so many living people to get angry at.
Point is, the sophistry is hot now. I just Googled “paranoid style Tea Party” and got this from NY Times, March 10, 2010:
“NEW YORK — The name Richard Hofstadter has been summoned up a lot lately in liberal opinion columns and the blogosphere as an eloquent and intellectually impeccable explanation for political developments like the Tea Party movement, the stardom of Sarah Palin, and the claim on right-wing talk radio that Barack Obama is a “socialist,” maybe even a “bolshevik” leading America to ruin....”