wingnuts attacking GOP leaders

The next time you hear the Republicans yammering that they want more bipartisan efforts in Washington, look what they’re doing to Lindsey Graham. Right after they barbecued Olympia Snowe for daring to talk health reform with the Democrats, they are crapping all over Graham for daring to talk climate change with them. The local GOP has censured Graham – the man who led the impeachment fight against Clinton -- for “weakening the Republican brand”, as though the wingnuts themselves aren’t already doing that. So the GOP civil war extends to destroying anyone who even talks to “The Enemy”, and strengthening the brand means ideological purity and purges of anyone even remotely suspected of…contact with reality.

As for Snowe herself: new polling shows that in her home state it’s the Democrats and Independents who like her, while the local Republicans dislike her, 40-46. The polling also shows that a generic conservative challenger could wipe her out in a primary. So switch parties already!

The Club For Growth still hasn’t forgiven Mike Huckabee. Huckleberry holds some rightwing views that appall even some Republicans, like his plan to put HIV patients in concentration camps. But as governor in Arkansas – you know, out in the real world – he had to do some things that were, ya know, realistic and pragmatic, even though they infuriated Planet Wingnut. And they still haven’t forgiven him, even though he is actually the wingnut candidate with the best chance of grabbing the GOP presidential nomination away from some moderate apostate like Romney.

The Vietnamese Republican Congressman who ignored all the GOP pressure and voted for the House health bill is now being bombarded with emails comparing him to Mao and hurling racial epithets at him.

The Tea Party loons have officially registered “Tea Party” as a party in Florida. They have Crist in their sights.

Obama is eating this up with a spoon: almost any Republican who could be a credible candidate for 2012 is being slaughtered by the wingnuts: Newt, Crist, Huckabee, Huntsman….Only Palin has avoided their ire. (I don’t count Jindal and Pawlenty because nobody takes them seriously.)

The wingnuts also have a hate group protesting outside the schools used by the Obama daughters, and the group’s website calls the girls "satanic spawn" of a "murderous bastard."

GOP strategists are lamenting that McCain got two thirds of his votes in the South and that “we are too white, too male, too old, too out of touch." Their troubles with women, particularly, are mounting, what with the treatment meted out to Scozzafava and Sotomayor, the Stupak nonsense, and the notion popular among the GOP’s insurance buddies that being a woman is a preexisting condition. Former party leader Haley Barbour said purges are a dumbass idea. But the wingnuts are in charge: we saw the proof when GOP leaders went out there to cheer on the wingnuts at the Bachmann rally.

The wingnuts have succumbed to hubris before. Regularly they declare that America is forever conservative and that the GOP will ever rule the waves. Then Reagan is smacked down for trying to rip apart Social Security, Newt is slapped down for trying to shut down the government, and Bush is slapped down again on the Social Security issue. In 2009 the Democrats have elected two new House members and grabbed two Senate seats, but the wingnuts refuse to believe that America has rejected them.