The GOP's Wingnuts (the right purges it's moderates)

The GOP's Wingnuts
Paul Waldman
February 23, 2005

Last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference held here in Washington featured a pantheon of right-wing extremists and some downright nutjobs. The Gadflyer's Paul Waldman wonders why there's no outcry when mainstream Republicans rub elbows with radicals in their movement.

Paul Waldman is editor in chief of the Gadflyer.

Had you happened by the Conservative Political Action Conference taking place at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington this past weekend, you would have been able to hobnob with representatives of the entire spectrum of conservative American thought, from the right to the far right to the really far right. And you would have seen the leading lights of the Republican establishment rubbing shoulders with the most radical reactionaries in America. There was the vice president of the United States—and Ann Coulter, who regularly calls for the murder of those with whom she disagrees. There was Karl Rove—and Gary Aldrich, the former FBI agent and author who claimed Hillary Clinton hung crack pipes from the White House Christmas tree. There was Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman—and right-wing dirty trickster David Bossie. There were nine U.S. senators—and the authors of a passel of anti-Clinton hit books. And those were just the official speakers.

Yet you won't hear anyone asking prominent Republicans to "distance themselves" from the wingnuts in their midst. Reporters and pundits won't be fishing out controversial statements from CPAC conference speakers and asking elected Republicans to repudiate them. Conservative writers won't be penning magazine pieces advising the RNC to hold the center by purging activists whose views are "outside the mainstream."

But the story is far different on the left, where the circular firing squad is a regularly scheduled event. This is not to say that conservatives don't sometimes go after their own, but the critical difference is this: The right purges its moderates, while the left purges its liberals.

more at...http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_gops_wingnuts.php

... to the right, which has been the right's strategy for thirty years, and it worked most effectively in the South, the area Lyndon Johnson said the Democrats would lose first after civil rights legislation was passed. Virtually all of the South and Southwest is now Republican, even Johnson's Texas (the roots of which could be seen in Connally's defection).

Let normal people see what the RW really is.

Exactly what this Movement needs!