"Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP"

Richard Viguerie, the legendary hard-right activist who spent much of the past decade arguing that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were too liberal, now declares that: "Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP."

There is little reason to argue with the man whose direct-mail campaigning funded the rise of the Republican right in the late 1970s and who grumbled loudly when Newt Gingrich, Bush, Cheney and Republican leaders tried to soften the party's roughest edges.

Viguerie isn't grumbling now.

He's celebrating. And rightly so.

With the decision of moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, the party's nominee in New York state special election for an open congressional seat, to suspend her campaign, the new "new right" -- which Viguerie describes as "Tea Party activists, town hall protesters, and conservatives across the country" -- can claim a clear victory in its struggle to define the GOP as a far more extreme party than that envisoned by Bush, Cheney or Gingrich.

Scozzafava, a state legislator, had the Republican ballot line and support from the party apparatus in Washington. But Tea Party and Town Hall activists -- and their mentors and funders such as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and the powerful Club for Growth -- threw their support behind Doug Hoffman, a more right-wing contender running on the New York Conservative Party line.

Scozzafava took a beating for overher support for gay rights and abortion rights and her sympathy woth organized labor.

The attacks were brutal and they dried up financial support for her campaign -- even though she began as a presumed frontrunner in New York's historically Republican 23rd district, where the seat went vacant after President Obama nominated moderate Republican Congressman John McHugh to serve as Secretary of the Army.

Key Republicans, led by 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, threw their support to Hoffman. And, with her poll numbers tanking, Scozzafava finally gave up with just three days to go before Tuesday's election.

Now that the GOP nominee is out of the running, Hoffman is well positioned to compete with Democratic newcomer Bill Owens in a race to fill a seat that has not elected a Democrat in more than a century.

Scozzafava pointedly refused to make an endorsement, suggesting that her supporters -- who polling suggests have more generally favorable views of President Obama than those expressed by Hoffman's rigidly anti-Obama campaign -- vote their consciences in Tuesday's special election.

No matter what its contours, the Hoffman-Owens result will be a footnote to the Scozzafava-Hoffman saga.

As GOP strategist Paul Erickson told The Washington Post with regard to the latter struggle: "This is entirely a battle over the definition and winning formula for Republican candidates going into the midterm elections of 2010 and beyond."

Erickson's point is well taken.

Republicans who have tried to move party back toward the political mainstream, after a three-year losing streak that has cost the GOP control of the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and the White House, are frustrated.

"Because of what's happened, we're going to have some mischief-making, which is not positive for a party that needs to really focus on other fundamentals in order to make a comeback," says Republican strategist John Weaver, a veteran aide to 2008 presidential nominee John McCain.

But Weaver and his crew -- including Gingrich, who backed Scozzafava -- has been beaten. Badly.

And Viguerie and his crew get the bragging rights.

Calling the developments in the New York race "an earthquake in American politics," he predicted that it would be "the first of many challenges to establishment Republicans that we will see for the 2010 elections and beyond."

Viguerie is certainly right.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/490865/tea_party_activists_are_the_new_gop

I remember when Johnson almost had them interred after 1964, and the only ones left were the John Birch loonies. Unfortunately, Nixon the vampire rose from the dead and managed to attract enough racists after the Civil Rights Act was passed to start the country on the 40-year road to where it is today.

The only real way to deal with Nazis is with prohibition and education. Prohibit hate speech, punish hate crimes, and teach children so they can be more informed and tolerant than their ignorant, racist parents.

He was the best of that tribe and it's been downhill ever since. He suckered a lot of people and then went insane.

It is the death knell to the GOP, in my opinion.

That doesn't mean that dems will have a free ride. I think we're going to see other parties start to gain power. But teh stupid that is the GOP needs to be marginalized.

Just keep moving to the right and you'll never see the light of day again..

Teabaggers suck balls
:rofl:

BTW. this is why republicans are so sucessful at labeling us. They controll the message and stay on it. Get with the program people.

"teabaggers" not tea party actvists
"White Supremacist" not racists
"Pro-crime" not pro 2nd ammendment etc.

They're the old Dixecrats









To give credit where credit is due.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/5trokerac3/what-teabagger-signs-say-vs-what-they-mean-o6r