'Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP'

[depakid]

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 the days of even the most minimal moderation are now over in the Republican Party.

"Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP," says Viguerie.

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.

<snip>

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 -- and a little bit scared. As Gingrich, who backed the decision of local Republican leaders to nominate Scozzafava, explained: "I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices."

Republican strategist John Weaver, a veteran aide to 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, echoed that theme. "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," explains Weaver.

But Gingrich, Weaver and other advocates for mainstreaming the GOP have 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," the right-wing strategist 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 right.

And it is not just the party of Lincoln or the old "Rockefeller Republicans" that is being broken. Gingrich and those conservatives who argued for broadening the party's base have suffered a serious blow. The GOP is now, as Richard Viguerie says, the party of "the Tea Parties and their candidates."

The question, of course, is whether a GOP defined by "the Tea Parties and their candidates" can compete not just in New York's 23rd district -- where the party has always won -- but across the great expanse of a country where the party has in recent years been losing.

If Viguerie and his compatriots are correct, it is not just the Republican Party but America that is about to take the most rightwing turn in its history. If Viguerie and his compatriots are wrong, the Grand Old Party could be turning toward a permanent minority status that only the most enthusiastic Democrats dared imagine.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/02-10

[S_E_Fudd]

1. Well they will be getting some big wins tomorrow...

Virginia and NJ Governorships, New York open congressional seat, and it appears to me Gay's are about to lose their rights in Maine...

Lets hope this is just election fatigue and Dems regain their enthusiasm in 2010

[Arkana]

2. Yeah, we'll get clobbered in VA.

But we have a good shot at winning NJ, the NY-23 has had a Republican in it since the beginning of time--so if Crazy Doug Hoffman wins it's really not going to make much of a difference, and I'm fairly sure that gays are not going to lose their rights in Maine.