Below The Beltway

It would appear that the mess in NY-23 is only the beginning of the conservative activist’s attack on the Republican establishment:

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

“I would say it’s the tip of the spear,” said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. “We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today.”

“What you’re going to see,” said Armey, “is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries.”

These high-stakes primaries, pitting the activist wing of the party against the establishment wing, stand to have a profound impact on the 2010 election landscape since they will create significant problems for moderate candidates recruited by the national party precisely because they appear well-suited to win in places that are not easily — or even plausibly — won by conservative candidates.

The tensions between the two visions threaten to limit the party’s gains in an election year that is shaping up in its favor.

Rick Moran addressed this unfolding Republican civil war in a post yesterday at Right Wing Nut House:

What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?

That kind of alchemy hasn’t been seen since Nostradamus tried to turn lead into gold. In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention – except they reject anything from anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a “conservative” reigns supreme all across the land.

The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as “conservative” was leapt upon by these morons as “proof” that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of “conservative” depending on where you live doesn’t seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against “moderates” who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic “litmus tests” guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.

Why the name calling? Why the harsh, unyielding language? Because I too, believe this country is in enormous trouble. But the way the base is going about trying to overcome the political deficit that George Bush and his cronies placed the Republican party will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. In truth, the gloating being done on the far right over the ravaging of Scozzafava has led to a belief that the template used to stick it to the establishment in NY23 can be grafted on to other districts where “RINO’s” are running – GOP incumbents be damned.

A prime example of what Rick is talking about can be seen in Tim Pawlenty’s appearance this morning on Morning Joe, where he pretty much wrote Olympia Snowe out of the GOP:

“Do you want Olympia Snowe in your Republican party?”MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked. “Are you glad that Olympia Snowe is in your party?”

Pawlenty scrupulously avoided giving a yes or no to that question.

“I’d much rather have a Republican in Maine than a Democrat that’s for sure,” Pawlenty said.

Now, remember, Snowe is a third-term Republican in a state that is essentially Democratic and in which it would be impossible for a Republican like, say, Jeff Sessions, to get elected at all, but Pawlenty isn’t sure he even wants her in the party. If you want to win in Maine, or Vermont, or Connecticut, you need Republicans like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and, if you are going to kick people like them out of your party for lack of ideological purity, then you’re going to be a permanent minority:

In effect, the base is criticizing the Republican establishment for acting like a political party and not a college debating society. The advantage of belonging to the latter is that you can pick and choose members based on whatever subjective criteria you wish. Don’t like the cut of a man’s suit or women with red hair? Fine. But don’t apply your ridiculous litmus tests to a political party trying to fashion a majority.

If you wish to deny membership into your ever shrinking club of “true” conservatives to those who you think don’t live up to your narrow, parochial, rigid definition, that is your problem. But if you care one whit about the United States of America, you would swallow your excessively ideological outlook on politics, take off the blinders, and realize that a party made up of lockstep righties who think like you is not only impossible, but the effort to realize that goal would be monumentally stupid.

(…)

[S]ending the message to not only seek out conservatives for office but also replace those who fall short of being “true” conservatives in the estimation of the base is loony. It is this kind of gunslinging that guarantees a Democratic majority. It would be a huge waste of resources to attempt such madness. But that is the goal of many in the base who can’t stand the thought of “moderates” calling themselves “Republican.”

Of course, Rick is being vehemently denounced by the very anti-reason conservatives he wrote about, but, then again, these are the same people who seem to think that Sarah Palin would make a great Presidential candidate in 2012 even though she’d be destined to lose, and lose big.

So, that makes me think Rick is right.