The wingnuts increase their grip on the GOP

The Republican National Committee is working on a “purity test” for its candidates. All candidates must oppose Obama’s stimulus bill, oppose Obama’s health reform, oppose health care rationing (which no one is proposing) and federal funding of abortion, oppose Obama’s cap-and-trade plan, oppose gay marriage, oppose card check, oppose immigrant amnesty, support troop surges, support the containment of the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, and oppose all gun control. If the party even believes that you deviate from the party line on more than two of these issues, you will get no support or money from the party.

Sieg heil! All apostates and counterrevolutionaries to the tumbrels!

Meanwhile Wingnut senator Jim DeMint has gained power by being the go-to guy to give the wingnut seal of approval to conservative candidates. He is backing a rightwing challenger to California candidate Carly Fiorina, who has now tacked to the right and flipflopped on the stimulus package. Moderate Republicans are sucking up to him, trying to get his approval so they don’t get primaried to death from the right, or cut off from GOP money (DeMint’s PAC has more than a million bucks for 2010). The party is terrified of him – he could push the GOP’s 2010 candidate slate way to the right and into the Loss column. Even John Cornyn, a rock-ribbed conservative, is irritated, and Coburn and Inhofe are also unconvinced.

But how to stop him? Even Michael Steele is starting to sound like Robespierre.